Reports of a burglary on #800 Draco St. Jan. 23, brought McKinley County Sheriff’s Officers to the scene shortly after 1 pm, where a number of people were found crowding in front of the house. Dep. Jonathan Todachine Jr. witnessed as one woman, the daughter of the victim, began yelling at a man and accusing him of breaking into her mother’s home and stealing money from a safe, along with medication and jewelry, according to the police report.
The money in the safe totaled $3,000.
The woman, 37, pointed officers to the suspect’s shoes, which matched prints in the snow leading up to the window of the residence.
The suspect, Andrew Falcon, 41, was allegedly standing in the front yard of the burgled home, saying: “I didn’t do it… I didn’t do it…” according to the report.
Todachine handcuffed Falcon and secured him in the back of his patrol car. Based on disturbances in the snow on the roof of the home, the victim’s daughter told officers that she thought the safe was perhaps taken up there before being handed off to a second thief on the other side of the fence.
COLLECTING EVIDENCE
Todachine asked a passing Comcast worker if he had seen anyone leaving the residence on Draco street, but he had seen nothing. A neighbor offered more help. Though he did not see the faces of the men who entered the residence, he thought one of them could be Falcon, as he had seen him frequently smoking cigarettes outside of the residence prior to the burglary.
Todachine returned to the scene of the crime to look for shoe patterns on the floor, though he found none. The lack of physical evidence, and the fact that no witnesses had positively identified Falcon, made the incident tricky to investigate. Still, the daughter of the victim was certain it was him. She claimed that he was waiting at her home after she discovered the burglary, and that he was vacuuming the rugs and “acting kind of weird,” according to the report.
The officer did notice some muddy shoe prints by the front door. Todachine was booked for burglary and an outstanding warrant.
By Abigail Rowe
Sun Editor
