Blotter: Burglars Target Another Millburn Home

Millburn Police worked a residential burglary and an attempted residential burglary and the case of a two stolen bikes from a residence on Friday, as well as a vehicle burglary and theft from the mall on Thursday.

The owners of a home on Walnut Avenue in Millburn called police after returning home around 6 p.m. Friday, March 9, to find that the glass in the back door had been shattered with a rock and then removed so that someone could get inside.

The police report by Officer Andrew Delrusso states that the closets and dresser drawers had been ransacked and that clothing and jewelry were missing. In addition, a crystal-silverware set was taken from a room off the kitchen.

Delrusso noted that a rock had also been used to break-in to other homes recently.

Earlier that day, Det. Edward Delafuente responded to a call on Berkeley Road at 10:46 a.m. where the resident had noticed a 2-inch by 2-inch square etched into a glass pane on the back door. It appeared that someone had unlocked the storm door and scratched the glass about five inches to the left of the deadbolt. However, the glass was not broken and it did not appear that anyone got inside or damaged the house further.

Also on Friday, a woman came into the police headquarters about 1:15 p.m. to report that two bicycles were stolen from her residence while she had been on vacation the week before. She said the bikes had always been stored in the stairwell of the apartment building where she lives on Route 124 without problems, but when she returned from vacation, she found they were missing. The apartment manager told her he had put them in the storage shed because they were a fire hazard in the stairwell. However, when she went to the storage shed to retrieve them, they were gone. One is a 26-inch Peugeot male racing bicycle, silver with orange lettering valued at $700 and one is a 24-inch female purple bike valued at $400. 

On Thursday, March 8, police responded to a break-in to a vehicle, where merchandise was taken from the trunk and the theft of an iPad from Paparazzi restaurant at The Mall at Short Hills.

In the case of the missing iPad 2, the owner had it with him at the bar where he and a friend were having drinks on Thursday night  but when he turned to leave it was gone and so was the man who had been sitting near them at the bar. Though the iPad2 has a tracking device on it, they had not been able to find it because it has been kept off since it was taken. Video surveillence at the mall did not show anyone leaving with an iPad2.

The car burglary also occurred at the mall on Sunday, where the victim reported that he had been shopping and put merchandise in the locked trunk of his car in parking lot A-1 and then went back inside to shop some more, as his business is to buy American goods and sell them in Europe. When he returned to his car later Sunday afternoon, to put more merchandise in the trunk, he noticed the other merchandise was missing. There was no sign of forced entry into the car, so police surmised that the burglar used some sort of universal key or unlocked the button locks inside the car and then opened the trunk from the inside.