A female serial thief was busted when a California woman returned home from the Thanksgiving holiday to find the barefoot suspect hiding in the closet of her luxury apartment armed with a pizza cutter, police said.
“He was in the corner of my closet,” Brittney Heinzman, 35, told CBS News when she found her neighbor Wendy Wilkinson, 43, hunched over in her bedroom closet at the Skyloft Apartment complex in Irvine with a pizza cutter, cutting board and kitchen towel in hand Dec. 1 .
“It’s like your worst nightmare, you know?” said the victim, who had just moved into an apartment complex — where a 733-square-foot one-bedroom unit costs nearly $2,900 a month — and had now decided to move out.
“Where is the safety?” he told KTLA. “I feel like I’ve just been stripped naked.
“To have someone look at every drawer of yours, every cabinet of yours, take your passport, take everything personally, you’re just left with so many questions,” Heinzman said.
Wendy Wilkinson, 43, was arrested after allegedly breaking into her neighbour’s apartment. KTLA
Heinzman said he first noticed the front door of his unit was unlocked and that his apartment had been ransacked when he returned from vacation on Dec. 1.
Later when he opened his bedroom closet, he allegedly found Wilkinson hiding inside.
“He just looked at me like a deer in the headlights, and I just yelled, ‘Get out! Get out!’ ” said Heinzman.
Wilkinson replied, “Please don’t hurt me” before running out of the apartment, Heinzman said.
“But that made me more upset,” the victim said. “I was like, ‘Are you going to hurt me?’ because he had a pizza cutter in his hand. I don’t know.”
Brittney Heinzman, 35, said she found Wilkinson hiding in her bedroom closet at the Skyloft Apartment complex in Irvine with a pizza cutter, cutting board and kitchen towel in hand. KTLA
After the suspect fled the apartment, Heinzman said he called police as he and his friend followed Wilkinson through the apartment complex.
They recorded cellphone video and images of him, and a neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera captured the suspect, barefoot in blue leggings and a white top with his hair in a bun, running through the hallway.
When Irvine police finally arrived on the scene, Heinzman told police he noticed several items missing from his apartment.
“He took sunglasses, he took a Dior handbag, he took socks, he took my work ID, my work badge, my passport, my credit card which he decided to use the next day” at a roadside car wash, Heinzman told CBS News.
A neighbor’s Doorbell camera captured the suspect, barefoot in blue leggings and a white top, running through the hallway afterward. KTLA Wilkinson is accused of stealing more than $30,000 worth of Heinzman’s belongings. KTLA
In total, officers allegedly found more than $30,000 of Heinzman’s belongings in his apartment, car and storage unit.
With all the stolen items, police believe the suspect must have entered Heinzman’s apartment several times in the past.
It’s still unclear how he got inside.
“Based on the time the victim was gone and the amount of property the suspect could have stolen, we believe it is possible the suspect entered the residence several times to take items,” said Officer Kyle Oldoerp in a statement.
Court records also reveal that Wilkinson is free on bail for a separate burglary case.
He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree residential burglary and identity theft in the Heinzman case.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
