A Bean Blossom man has been charged with felony burglary after police say he broke into a garage and stole several items, then pawned them.
On Nov. 14, Lt. Mike Moore with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department met with the victim who said two chainsaws, a leaf blower and a weed eater were stolen from a detached garage on his Tulip Tree Road property that was left open, according to a probable cause affidavit by Deputy Brian Shrader.
An 8-foot-tall aluminum ladder was also taken from a garage that had been shut, the report said.
Shrader said Jacob Thompson, 26, had pawned items at two pawn shops in Bloomington in November. Police returned the items to the Tulip Tree Road owner.
The victim told police he found Thompson at his home Dec. 12 and confronted him about the thefts, but Thompson denied stealing anything.
With the help of cellphone ping data, Shrader was able to confirm that Thompson was in the area of the victim’s home Dec. 8 and that data showed him at a pawn shop where he sold items less than an hour later.
When Shrader tried to find Thompson at his home Dec. 28, people living there told him he was in rehab facility for a heroin addiction. On Jan. 8, the residents told Shrader they found items that did not belong to them in their back barn. A one-ton jack was returned to the theft victim, the police report said.
In an interview Jan. 12, Thompson told Shrader that he had sold items to pawn shops over the past several months to support his addiction and that he sold items for other people, naming two men specifically, the report said. They would split the money among all of them, the report said.
But Thompson denied taking anything from the Tulip Tree Road victim’s property.
