The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is trying to identify a man suspected of stealing a side-by-side from a High Ridge home and then two days later stealing tools from the Northwest Junior Football Association and a spool of wire from Ameren in House Springs. All items were recovered, the police reported.
A man was seen in video surveillance footage when he allegedly broke into a Northwest Junior Football shed and appeared to try to break into another early in the morning of Sept. 21, said Andy Lenzen, the youth football association’s president.
The man allegedly stole a 2020 Kawasaki Mule Pro at about 1:50 a.m. Sept. 19 from a home in the 6300 block of Hwy. PP in High Ridge. The victim told investigators he either left the keys in the ignition or on the side-by-side, the report said.
At about 1:15 a.m. Sept. 21, Lenzen said a security camera was repositioned outside the Northwest Junior Football Association’s shed at the Northwest School District’s Early Childhood Center, 6180 Hwy. MM, in House Springs. The association has football teams and cheerleading squads for third through eighth grade students who will attend Northwest High School, Lenzen said.
Lenzen said when the camera repositioned itself at about 1:30 a.m., a man was seen apparently attempting to break a lock on a shed door before he walked away. Lenzen said he entered one of the sheds at about 6:30 a.m. Sept. 21 to gather equipment to take the high school for games that were going to be played that day.
He said he did not notice anything missing from the shed that he got the equipment from, but when he watched the surveillance video at about 8 a.m., he returned to the sheds. He said the lock on the shed door had been broken by a drill.
Lenzen said the broken lock was on the shed he had gotten the equipment from, and he hadn’t noticed it was broken because he entered the shed through its garage door. He said when he looked around the shed, he discovered approximately $500 worth of tools were stolen from a cabinet.
“He had closed the cabinet, and I didn’t open it because why would I,” Lenzen said.
The Sheriff’s Office was called at about 5 a.m. Sept. 21 by security personnel at the Ameren substation, 6450 Hwy. MM, in House Springs, because they saw a man driving around the facility in the side-by-side. A deputy found the stolen Kawasaki Mule Pro running in a nearby creek, the report said.
The deputy also recovered the stolen tools and a spool of wire, which was taken from the substation, on the side-by-side, according to the report.
The man was not in the area when the stolen items were recovered, the Sheriff’s Office reported.
“It was the best possible scenario,” Lenzen said of the association’s tools being recovered with the other stolen items. “In talking to the cops, they said, ‘If this guy didn’t steal the side-by-side, I guarantee you guys wouldn’t be getting your stuff back.’ I was like, ‘I’m fully aware of that.’ We got lucky we were tied to another deal.”
As of Sept. 25, the man had not been identified, spokesman Grant Bissell said. He asks anyone with information about the thefts to call the Sheriff’s Office at 636-797-5515.