HOUSTON: Four men of South American origin have been arrested in the US state of Texas for a string of lunchtime burglaries, including of jewellery worth over USD 1 million, in the houses of people of Indian and Asian descent.
College Station city police arrested the four persons of South American origin for committing robberies in the area.
The victims were of Indian and Asian descent, police said.
Police believe the crimes are organised, KBTX.com news website reported.
Since September, residents in the Edelweiss Estates community had been targeted, and the burglars had been taking jewelry, that over time has amounted to more than $1 Million.
“We had been doing a lot of analytical work, to try and build a pattern of when they were gonna hit, when its most likely and what neighborhoods were most targeted,” explained Asst. Chief of Police Billy Couch.
Oct 30 morning, officers spotted two vehicles suspected in the string of burglaries that have hit the neighborhood. One car was parked on Chantal Circle, where a burglary had happened just that morning.
“We were able to stop one vehicle with three suspects inside, a second vehicle fled from the police officer and ultimately crashed into a another vehicle,” said Couch.
Carols Cordoba, Helmer Bellaga, Harold Murillo and Alex Castillo-Valencia were all taken into custody and are being held on $250,000 bonds.
“We have an ongoing investigation trying to link them to other crimes that occurred that have a similar M-O and similar victims,” said Couch.
While those four suspects are behind bars, this isn’t the first time police have had to deal with a crime of this nature, and it’s possible it won’t be the last.
“We did have a similar spree of offenses back in 2013. We arrested suspects in that case, they were from the South American community,” explained Couch. The suspects in this case were also from the South American community. We do believe its organized crime so there are potential for other actors to be in our communities.”