In West Seattle Crime Watch, we have information on four incidents, starting with two school burglaries that are likely related:
SCHOOL BREAK-INS, WITH A LIKELY LINK: A Pathfinder K-8 parent forwarded us a note sent to families from the school’s music teacher, announcing that the school’s music room was burglarized over winter break:
… Items stolen include a majority of our woodwind, brass, and string instruments stored in the room, audio equipment, internet connectivity servers/devices, percussion instruments and equipment, and our student-device charging stations. …
I ask that you have a conversation with your students about this event. Music, for all grade levels and subjects, is often a safe space for students to come to explore their creativity, build community, and engage in deep and rich learning about the arts and themselves. I imagine some students will be distraught to learn about this violation of our space, as I am. This challenge is a setback, but one we can bounce back from. It shows us what we need to improve to make the Pathfinder music program even greater than it already is. …
You can read the entire message here. It also says the school is “organizing this week to determine how to replace the stolen equipment and how to protect it moving forward.”
We learned about the Pathfinder burglary hours after obtaining a report from SPD about a weekend burglary that seems likely related because the recovered items included what the report described as “several band instruments/equipment … labeled with Seattle Public Schools stickers.” Those items were found inside a stolen car near where police arrested a burglary suspect at South Seattle College (WSB sponsor) early Sunday.
The report says officers were sent early Sunday after a call from a campus security guard who saw a person she had kicked off the property earlier in the night. When police arrived, they found a vehicle she reported having seen the person driving, parked in the “back maintenance area” of the campus. It had been reported stolen in Renton. Inside were the aforementioned stolen instruments (no further description except that they included a tuba) as well as “various power tools, several axes/machetes, a bucket full of keys, several burglary tools, and a full-faced plastic mask,” plus “suspected heroin.” The power tools and keys were identified as SSC property; the other items were taken to the Southwest Precinct as evidence. Meantime, officers searching the area discovered the 28-year-old suspect hiding in a storage closet. He was arrested and booked into King County Jail, from which the jail roster shows he was released tonight, after a day and a half.
TWO OTHER BREAK-IN ATTEMPTS: We also obtained police reports today on two other weekend incidents logged as “commercial burglaries,” though in both cases the would-be burglar(s) apparently were unsuccessful in gaining entry. Both happened at businesses on California Avenue SW, neither of which is identified by name in the reports. In the 5200 block of California SW, an employee arriving at work Sunday morning found “a front window broken out … to the right of the front sliding glass doors,” but there was no indication anyone got inside. In the 6500 block of California SW, also on Sunday morning, another front window was found broken at a business, with no indication of entry. In this case, the report says, security video recorded someone breaking the window by “using a lighter and unknown ‘accelerant/ to possibly burn a hole” in it.
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