WESTFIELD – A Springfield man who allegedly broke into his estranged girlfriend’s home twice – in the same night – was arrested and has been held after arraignment in Westfield District Court.
Westfield Police Officer Jamie Campbell reports in a court document that she responded to a breaking and entering call at 1:16 a.m. on Nov. 9 and spoke with a victim who said that she woke up to find her former boyfriend in her bedroom. The victim explained to Campbell that the suspect had “slipped a credit card into the back door to unlock it” and said that is his method to get into her family’s home because he does not live there and does not have a key.
The victim said that when she awoke in her second floor bedroom, the man (later identified as Joel A. O’Quinn, 32, of 120 Roosevelt Ave., Springfield) was stealing her keys and left the house when she threatened to call police, fleeing in her Lexus SUV with her set of keys which included keys to the house and garage.
The victim called again, at 3:38 a.m., to report that she was in her kitchen and O’Quinn had pulled into her driveway in her vehicle. She said that he had exited the SUV and was moving toward the back door when she ran upstairs and locked herself in her mother’s bedroom.
Campbell repots that when officers arrived the SUV was in the driveway and the house was locked so the officers broke a window in a porch door to gain entry.
O’Quinn was located, Campbell reports, in “the children’s bedroom on the second floor” and arrested without further incident. Campbell noted that he is the defendant of an active restraining order which he violated by placing the victim in fear.
The couple’s relationship has apparently been turbulent lately as both O’Quinn and the victim had been arrested two days earlier for assaulting each other.
Those charges grew from an argument which led to two calls for police – hours apart – in which officers found grounds to arrest each of them for domestic assault and battery.
In both case’s, the charges were dismissed after each party claimed Fifth Amendment protection and refused to testify.
After O’Quinn was arrested early Friday morning he was arraigned in Westfield District Court later in the day on charges of breaking and entering a building in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony, larceny from a building, placing a person in fear by entering at night with intent to commit a felony, using a motor vehicle without authority and violation of an abuse prevention order.
He was held in lieu of $2,500 cash bail pending a Dec. 7 hearing.
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