ST. LOUIS – Authorities say a FOX 2 report on the theft of a specialized tricycle last summer has led to an arrest and helped connect the same suspect to multiple crimes in St. Louis City and County.
It’s all come together in just the past few weeks.
About 10 days ago, a Central West End resident posted a photo and video of the same man trespassing in her yard, inside her six-foot-high fence. She warned that he could have been looking for something to steal, not knowing what investigators say they now know: the same man had been stealing from residents in the neighborhood since at least last August.
FOX 2 showed video then of a man stealing a $3,000 specialized tricycle from the parking garage of a condo/apartment building. It was a big loss for the trike’s disabled owner. That trike was his chief form of exercise.
“You can’t have anything without someone wanting to take it. That’s what burns me,” the victim said at the time.
Jim Whyte, executive director of the Central West End Neighborhood Security Initiative, which has a network of surveillance cameras to aid police, said that although the crime went unsolved for months, video of the suspect featured in the FOX 2 report connected him to other suspected crimes in just the past few weeks: package thefts from a couple of buildings in April.
Surveillance cameras also caught both incidents.
“They had really good pictures of this guy. We noticed right away the physical characteristics of this guy strongly resembled the guy who was involved in this stolen specialty bike, recumbent bike (tricycle),” Whyte said.
All of that helped police recognize the suspect outside a CWE library branch, pushing a bicycle and other items believed to have recently been stolen. Police then arrested Jared Smith-Burns of south St. Louis.
Smith-Burns been released from jail on GPS monitoring, pending trial in the tricycle theft case. He’s been cited for trespassing at the Heman Park Community Center in University City in March.
“This is exactly why we share video with not just our districts, citywide, but also in St. Louis County,” Whyte said.
Anyone who may recognize Smith-Burns in connection to additional incidents should call police, authorities said.