Burglaries persist around Oakland

While Pitt students enjoyed the past three weeks of holiday bliss from academics, it seems… While Pitt students enjoyed the past three weeks of holiday bliss from academics, it seems they were not the only ones looking forward to the well-earned winter vacation. In two separate incidents over winter break, burglars broke into and robbed students’ homes in Oakland.

Having recently finished his finals, Pitt senior Adam Sharrow, of 269 N. Dithridge St. in North Oakland, arrived home from an eight-hour shift at work on Dec. 14 to find his third story window wide open.

Sharrow quickly took stock of his possessions after noticing that someone had ripped the insulating plastic off the window and discovered that his laptop and spare change jar were missing.

He contacted the police immediately and filed a report. Since the laptop was an older model, the amount of the robbery only totaled about $35. According to Sharrow, the officer who arrived at the scene of the crime thought that the perpetrator had gotten spooked before grabbing more expensive items.

“I personally don’t feel unsafe. But as far as my belongings go, I feel I’ll have to protect them more so in the future,” Sharrow said, who has only lived at his present residence since the beginning of the fall semester.

Pitt junior Jackie Hynes, who lives in the first-floor apartment below Sharrow, was home at the time of the incident. At about 1:30 p.m. Hynes said she heard a “screeching metal sound” but mistook it for the washing machine in the basement, which sometimes makes similar noises.

Only when the officer on call took her statements did Hynes realize that the strange sound had been the perpetrator’s foot steps on the fire escape, used to reach the third-story window.

Hynes commented that a similar burglary, in which the window was pushed open rather than broken, had occurred at her apartment in August and that a Playstation and several movies had been stolen.

A definitive connection has not been made between the two incidents. The city police were unavailable for comment on the incident.

A much more costly burglary took place in South Oakland at 329 Meyran Ave. on Dec. 27. Jesse Pitell, a junior at Duquesne, and his four roommates were robbed in the midst of moving to a new residence in the South Side.

After Pitell and several roommates left Oakland with the second or third load of furnishings around 5 p.m., a burglar entered the house through an unlocked back door and stole three TVs, a desktop computer and a stereo. The total cost of the burglary amounted to a combined loss of $2,500.

A roommate who was on the third floor at the time of the robbery thought that the noise downstairs was simply his roommates still packing. When the noise grew louder than usual, the roommate came down to the first floor only to discover the missing items.

The roommate witnessed a black man race off in a blue Ford van, which was parked in the back lot. He also spotted the license plate number, but the police reported later that the plate did not match the vehicle and had likely been stolen. No leads have since turned up as to the stolen electronics or the perpetrator.

Pitell is convinced that the burglar had been scoping the house out all afternoon. He reasoned that since the burglar drove away right before him and his roommates returned, the burglar had observed closely how long it took them between trips.

When asked about the steady rash of burglaries this last semester in the neighborhood, Pitell echoed Sharrow’s sentiments, saying, “Crime in Oakland is obvious, but it can be prevented.” One method for prevention he plans to adopt is to let his roommates know exactly when he is leaving from now on.

Although burglaries fell in Oakland from 2003 to 2005, city police Detective John Mihalcin was quoted in an Oct. 26 article in The Pitt News as recently observing a definite rise in neighborhood burglaries. Mihalcin named the perceived vulnerability of the large student population in Oakland and the city’s current surge in heroin addiction as the primary culprits.

Unfortunately, neither of these problems go away as students leave for holiday break. Being conscious of the crime problem in Oakland is not enough, said Pitell, “You got to still double-check the safety of your house.”