WESTFIELD – A Chicopee man is facing a larceny charge after a failed shoplifting attempt but his apparent colleague escaped when he attempted to steal the same merchandise from the same store on the same day.
City police responded Tuesday, Dec. 31, to a 10:15 a.m. call from a city worker who reported he had seen a male party with a shopping basket flee from the Walgreens store on Main Street while pursued by a store employee.
Officer David Racicot was the first officer to arrive and reports that the store manager told him that he had been chasing a suspect who fled the store.
The store manager said that when he yelled at the suspect he discarded the basket and jumped the fence surrounding the city’s old burial ground.
Officers Kerry Paton and Charles Kielbasa also responded and, when they learned that the suspect was believed to be in the burial ground, drove their cruisers on Mechanic and White streets until they spotted the suspect in the graveyard.
An officer scaled the fence and detained the man.
The store manager went to the cemetery and identified the suspect as the man who had attempted to steal from his store.
Racicot report that a store employee said that she had seen the man put electric toothbrushes into one of the store’s handbaskets and confronted him when he appeared to be leaving the store without paying for the merchandise.
When the man fled from her, the clerk informed her manager who gave chase.
The shopping basket was retrieved and five electric toothbrushes valued at $721.38 were recovered.
The suspect, Claudio Mateo, 26, of 27 Davenport St., Chicopee, was arrested for larceny of property valued more than $250.
The store manager told Racicot that there had been a vehicle which had apparently been waiting for the suspect when he fled the store but the operator apparently abandoned his accomplice and left without him.
Det. Anthony Tsatsos found that a review of security video associated with another open shoplifting case, at another city drug store, appeared to show that Mateo and another man had been responsible for a larceny there and a vehicle which fit the description of the one the manager had seen waiting had been involved.
Tsatsos reports that when he went to the Walgreens store a short time after the larceny attempt employees told him that another attempt had been made minutes earlier to steal electric toothbrushes.
Tsatsos was told that an employee had seen a man, who fit the description of Mateo’s apparent accomplice from the other incident, put electric toothbrushes into a handbasket and walk toward the exit.
The store manager said that when he saw the man and approached him, the suspect discarded the basket and fled, successfully.
Mateo was arraigned later that day in Westfield District Court before Judge Rita Koenigs.
Koenigs, citing his “history of defaulting” on court dates, set bail at $1,000 and Mateo was held pending a Jan. 30 hearing.
