GILROY
– Law-enforcement officers busted open a burglary ring Wednesday
and found dozens of stolen items, mostly power tools, in a locked
storage building in a Gilroy labor camp.
GILROY – Law-enforcement officers busted open a burglary ring Wednesday and found dozens of stolen items, mostly power tools, in a locked storage building in a Gilroy labor camp.
Sheriff’s detectives have linked the recovered items to at least six reported thefts outside city limits and at least two in the city of Gilroy. Detectives think at least 15 cases will be solved as a result of the bust.
Most of the burglars are still at large, although the Sheriff’s Department has some suspects. Sheriff’s deputies did, however, arrest the janitor at the Rodriguez labor camp, Mario Martinez Medina, 44, who claimed he was storing the items for a friend and did not know they were stolen. During a consensual search of Medina’s room, police found between 1.5 and 2 ounces of methamphetamine, a digital scale, a loaded shotgun, an unloaded .22-caliber rifle and $1,652 in cash.
On Thursday morning, Rick McCoid came to the Sheriff’s Department office in San Martin to pick up his concrete saw, valued at $800. He was a happy man as he left.
“It was only gone one night,” McCoid said, indicating the heavy power saw in his hand, which he had reported stolen the morning before. It had been the first night he had ever left equipment in his brand-new, steel-doored storage shed on Camino Arroyo, where he had been working on the new shopping centers.
While the burglars appeared to have struck homes and businesses, their specialty seems to have been stealing power tools from construction-site storage buildings. Sheriff’s Detective Julian Quiñonez said he has evidence the thieves often took day-labor jobs at various construction projects around town to find out where the equipment was stored.
“For the contractors, be very careful on who you hire,” Quiñonez advised.
The recovered items included compressors, generators, pressure washers, power saws, various other power and hand tools, two computers, two digital cameras, a surround-sound stereo system and a bicycle. Found with these were an array of bolt cutters, the largest being more than 3 feet long. Bolt cutters are suspected in most of the construction-site burglaries.
Quiñonez described the details of Wednesday’s bust: It began at about 5 a.m. Wednesday, when patrolling sheriff’s deputies stopped a burglary in progress in San Martin, on the 12000 block of Monterey Road. In the investigation that followed, sheriff’s detectives gained information that led them to believe items burglarized from all over the South Valley were being stored in a warehouse at the Rodriguez labor camp, at 935 Southside Drive, just outside the southeast Gilroy city limit.
Detectives gained information that the stolen items would soon be shipped to Mexico to be exchanged for money and/or drugs. They also heard that money and drugs could be found with the cache and – more alarming – that the illicit items were being guarded by at least one armed man.
While waiting for a search warrant, Sheriff’s Department officials decided to “freeze” the storage building – that is, prevent anyone from entering or leaving it. Taking precautions based on the armed-guard warning, deputies and detectives assembled at about 1 p.m. with members of the Gilroy and Morgan Hill police departments and two state drug agencies: the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the Unified Narcotics Enforcement Team. Together, they moved in and secured the area; no armed guards ever emerged.
It was about three hours later that a judge signed a search warrant. Inside the warehouse, police discovered the aforementioned items, which matched descriptions of stolen property from around the area.
While waiting for the warrant, a police officer had reportedly noticed Medina through an open door, with an air compressor beside him that matched a stolen-property description. After the warrant was served, Quiñonez and other officers reportedly asked Medina where he had gotten the compressor. He reportedly answered that a friend had asked him to store it, along with everything else police were, at that time, removing from the warehouse. This friend had dropped these things off the night before, Medina reportedly said. He said this friend was a good friend but said he didn’t know his name, according to Quiñonez. Medina demonstrated that he had the key that fit the storage building’s lock.
Quiñonez said Medina signed a consent form to allow police to search his room. It was during this search that police found the aforementioned guns, drugs, scale and cash, Quiñonez said. They arrested him without incident.
Medina faces felony charges for possession of stolen property and of narcotics for sale. The simultaneous possession of a gun could add several years to his sentence if he is convicted.
A member of the Rodriguez family, which has owned the camp for about 30 years, said Medina had worked there for about three years. This family member said he never suspected Medina of illegal activity.
