That security-camera image is from charging documents in the case that the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has filed against an alleged serial shoplifter, 25-year-old West Seattle resident Joseph E. Herdrich. It is described as showing Herdrich exiting the Marshall’s store at Westwood Village on October 5th with more than $850 in stolen merchandise. He wasn’t arrested that day, but just two weeks earlier, he had been arrested there in similar circumstances – here’s a security-camera image from that day, in which he is accused of stealing $700 worth of merchandise:
Three and a half days later, on September 24th, with no charges yet filed, he was released from jail. But he’s there now, two weeks after yet another arrest at Westwood Village, after allegedly shoplifting more than $500 in items from the QFC store on November 18th. In that case, store security confronted him and got the items back; he was still outside the store when police arrived and arrested him. Now the KCPAO has charged him with three counts of second-degree burglary for all three of the incidents we’ve mentioned, The charging documents say Herdrich had already been banned – “trespassed” – from both those stores and from other businesses in Westwood Village, but keeps going back to shoplift. An SPD detective wrote in a September report that Herdrich had been under investigation for months for thefts at both the same Marshall’s store and Delridge Home Depot and that he was “driven by his fentanyl addiction.” Herdrich’s arraignment is scheduled for December 7. His bail was set at just $250 by a judge who prosecutors say was unaware of his previous arrests; they argued for raising it to $5,000 given the added facts in the case, but the court docket says that motion was denied.
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