GILROY
– A local man accused of stealing from people’s homes while they
slept has a substantial rap sheet. Not only had he tried his hand
at burglary before, but he served more than a year in jail for
cumulative driving-under-the-influence convictions.
GILROY – A local man accused of stealing from people’s homes while they slept has a substantial rap sheet. Not only had he tried his hand at burglary before, but he served more than a year in jail for cumulative driving-under-the-influence convictions.
Now Robert Heredia is in jail on three felony charges, and he could face more if fingerprints link him to four other cat burglaries in south Gilroy on Oct. 16.
Heredia faces two counts of burglary for sneaking into two homes on Santa Theresa Drive between 4:30 and 5 a.m. Nov. 2. He also faces a grand theft charge for a separate incident, in which police say he paid his family’s $933 phone bill with a blank, voided check from an employer who had just fired him.
Heredia and his attorney, Public Defender Jennifer Green, put off entering pleas to these three charges in court in San Martin Tuesday. He will appear again on Jan. 5 to enter pleas.
If convicted of all three, he could face a maximum of 14 years in prison. The burglaries would also count as his second and third strikes according to California law, making him eligible in the future for a 25-years-to-life sentence for any serious felony.
Several crimes and punishments, as well as a drug problem, stain the recent past of Heredia, 44, a former barber and truck driver who grew up in Gilroy but who claimed to be homeless when Gilroy police arrested him a month ago. He had previously lived in a house on Las Animas Avenue with his wife and at least one child.
On June 6, 2001, Heredia was convicted of attempted burglary in Monterey County and sentenced to 200 days in jail, a $200 restitution fine and three years of formal probation, according to court records there.
Heredia will violate that probation if he is convicted of any new crimes, including those he now faces. Monterey County district attorneys have the option of pressing a probation-violation charge against him, although they haven’t yet. If they do, and if Heredia is convicted in Santa Clara County, he would appear in Monterey County court after the case here closes but before he serves further incarceration time.
In Santa Clara County, Heredia served more than a year behind bars in the mid-1990s for DUI-related offenses. On May 15, 1994, a judge sentenced him to 12 months in jail for multiple DUI convictions. After his release, he violated his probation and was sentenced to another 16 months. He probably served much less than that, however, due to prior jail credits, Deputy District Attorney Mark Hood said.
Heredia also had some sort of drug problem when he was arrested this latest time. His attorney noted in court Tuesday that he is participating in a drug-treatment program in jail.
Heredia has been incarcerated since Gilroy police arrested him Nov. 2. Police found Heredia at the scene minutes after a woman called them at 4:53 a.m., saying she woke to the sound of someone leaving her house. Police found Heredia a block from the house, reportedly trying to hide from them in someone’s yard.
As police were handcuffing Heredia, a woman named Maria Magallanes approached and positively identified Heredia as the man she had just seen in the house she was staying in, which belongs to her sister. Magallanes had been up late, watching television in the living room and saw Heredia in the hallway through a set of French doors. He saw her, too, said, “Good-bye,” and fled, she said. Heredia also was found in possession of $500 cash, the amount reported stolen from the other home.
Doors to both homes were unlocked, and there were no signs of forced entry.
The police sergeant on duty that night was John Sheedy, who went to school with Heredia.
“It was kind of a shock,” Sheedy said this morning of seeing Heredia arrested. “The last time I saw him was about six months ago, and he seemed to be doing well. But if he was on the drugs, they make you do stupid things.”
Meanwhile, Morgan Hill police were investigating Heredia in the grand-theft case, as well as a man named John Soriano, whom Heredia was letting live in his garage at the time.
Soriano told police he helped Heredia use an automated telephone system Aug. 1 to charge the Heredia family’s extremely high bill to Tom Lavar Water Truck Service of Morgan Hill, for which Heredia had driven trucks in the recent past. They did this using a voided company check Heredia had saved. Heredia said Lavar owed him money anyway, Soriano said.
Heredia told police he had given the phone bill to Soriano to pay since Soriano was staying rent-free. He said he didn’t know how Soriano paid the bill but noted the voided check was stored in the garage, where Soriano slept.
The phone bill was high because Heredia’s daughter had accepted collect phone calls from her boyfriend who was incarcerated, Heredia’s wife told police.
Morgan Hill police filed the charge against Heredia Nov. 20 while he already was in jail for burglary.
Gilroy police still are waiting to hear back from the San Jose Police Department’s fingerprint lab about the prints from the Oct. 16 burglaries. It could be another month or more before results are known, Detective John Marfia said. This is partially because Heredia is already incarcerated and partly because Gilroy cases are usually low on the SJPD’s priority list.
A similar Gilroy cat burglary Dec. 2, while Heredia was in jail, indicates that he’s not the only possible suspect in the Oct. 16 cases.
