Credit card thief dines out

A credit card was stolen near one of the dorms on Sept. 15 at about 8:30 a.m. A week later, on Wednesday, a University of Arizona Police Department officer received a report of the theft and of fraudulent charges.

When the officer arrived at the dorms he made contact with a UA student who said she noticed her credit card was missing on Sept.15, at approximately 8:30 a.m. At the time, she had thought that she probably unintentionally dropped the card somewhere inside or just outside of the dorm. On that same day, she contacted her bank and canceled the credit card.

When the officer spoke to her, the woman informed him that she got a letter from her bank alerting her that two charges were made on the canceled card. One was a $1.50 charge made at a vending machine, and the second was a charge made at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse for $28.

The officer asked the woman for a print out of the bank statement, and asked her why she waited over a week to report the stolen card. The woman said she didn’t think anything would come of it.

No evidence was collected and there are no suspects or witnesses.

UA employee’s truck broken into

An unknown person damaged a UA work truck and stole an amp meter as well as a welding torch while the truck was parked in a parking lot on campus on Monday. Possible DNA evidence and latent prints were taken from the scene.

At 6:10 a.m. that morning, a UA employee noticed his work truck had been broken into. A UAPD officer arrived to speak with him about a 30 minutes later and was informed by the man that he had parked and locked his car at 5:15 p.m. the day before, when he had left for the day.

The man arrived back to work the next day and tried to get into the truck at 6:10 a.m. when he saw that the exterior driver’s door handle had been pried away from the door.

He told UAPD that he had a Fluke amp probe/volt meter on the front seat, which was now missing. The man checked out the rest of the vehicle and noticed that a toolbox handle had been pried open. The box was missing a Victor welding torch. He valued the meter at approximately $450 and the torch at about $400. Both of the items were university property.

As the officer investigated the scene, he noticed a small red spot, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, on the driver’s seat. Appearing to be blood, he took a control sample swab.

The officer was then able to lift one latent fingerprint from underneath of the toolbox handle that had been damaged. Additional prints were also successfully taken from the driver’s side door near the door handle, the exterior doorframe and from the interior doorframe.

The swabs and latent prints were transported back to UAPD and placed into evidence, and will be sent for analysis. The UA employee said he would try to locate the serial numbers for the stolen items.

(Tire)ing theft

Sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday the front tire of a bicycle was stolen.

Around 4 p.m. Tuesday, a woman had secured her bike at the bicycle racks on the corner of Highland Commons. When she returned to the racks the next day at 8:40 a.m., she found that her front tire had been stolen as well as the cable lock.

An unknown subject had taken a front tire from another nearby bike and tried placing it on the woman’s bike.

The bicycle was placed into UAPD property for safekeeping until she could purchase another lock. The woman requested a victim’s rights form and received it at the scene.

The front tire of the other bicycle that was left near her bike was also placed into UAPD property. There are no suspects in the case.