Update:
University Police and the Edinburg Police Department arrested an alleged perpetrator related to the burglary of habitation and criminal trespass incidents that occurred on the Edinburg campus earlier this week.
Campus police sent an email to the campus community earlier today informing it of the arrest.
Original story:
A string of late-night burglaries and graffiti classified as a hate crime occurred on the Edinburg campus just days before Spring Break.
Police responded to four different burglary of habitation reports Wednesday at The Village Apartments. In each incident, a female student reported an unknown male entered her apartment, in some cases taking money and jewelry. These reports are being investigated as a series of burglaries committed by the same suspect.
The UTRGV Police Department issued a notice of the burglaries and hate crime to the campus community in an email after the incidents occurred, in compliance with the “Timely Notice” provisions of the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act of 1998.
UTRGV Police Chief Raul Munguia said University Police has been working with the Edinburg Police Department and hopes to have a resolution by the end of the day today.
“We do have a person of interest identified and I’m expecting by the end of the day to have a resolution to the burglaries,” Munguia said.
At 8:59 a.m. Wednesday, a female student reported she awoke at 2 a.m. to find an unknown male in her apartment. The male was escorted out of the dorm room. The victim later discovered money missing from her purse.
The second report was made at 12:39 p.m. when another female student reported she woke up about 2 a.m. to an unknown male inside the common area of her apartment. The female reported that the male suspect claimed he was looking for an unknown female who did not live in the apartment, at which time the suspect left the apartment. Later in the morning, she discovered jewelry was missing.
The third burglary of habitation report was made at 12:54 p.m., when a female student reported she found an unknown male inside the interior hallway of her apartment about 12:40 a.m. The male suspect stated he was looking for her roommate, who was not present at the time. The resident then escorted the male out of her apartment, only to find later that money was stolen from a bedroom.
The fourth report was made at 1:56 p.m., when a female student reported that she was sleeping in the common area of her apartment when she was awakened by an unknown male entering through an unlocked exterior door between 12:30 and 1 a.m. The male suspect claimed he was looking for an individual, but left when the student told him he was in the wrong apartment. Nothing was reported stolen.
In all four burglaries, the suspect entered the apartments through unlocked front doors. Burglary of habitation is classified as a second-degree felony.
“I ran into this at UT-Austin when I was up there,” Munguia said. “Students that are living off campus do the same thing, leave their doors unlocked. They tend to not lock their doors after dark because some of them are still out. Those individuals that are always looking to steal something or get into an apartment or home, and unfortunately, the students have computers, they have bikes. Someone can just open the door without making any noise, grab a computer and just walk off. The students are a soft target.”
The suspect is described as a short Hispanic male with brown eyes and brown hair. Two female students described the suspect as wearing blue jeans, a dark color zip-up hoody sweatshirt and a black and red baseball cap. In the other two descriptions, he was reported as having a tattoo on the right side of his neck and wearing a red shirt.
At 4:10 p.m., a female student at the off-campus Veranda Apartments in Edinburg reported an unknown male subject entered her apartment while she was sleeping at around 1:15 a.m. She stated the subject matched the description given in the timely warnings issued in reference to the burglary of habitations. The Edinburg Police Department is investigating the incident.
The same day at 8:10 p.m., a student contacted an officer, reporting that an unknown male subject entered her apartment around 2 p.m. Feb 20. The student stated the male subject matched the description given in the timely warnings. The male subject claimed to be looking for a female student but left without incident. The case is being treated as criminal trespass.
“On this particular case, you saw that one person called in almost eight hours later, then we sent out the timely warning,” Munguia said. “As soon as we sent out the timely warning, the flood came in of everything else that had been occurring and we had not heard a peep of it because none of the students had said anything to us. One of the things I implore the students to do is when something occurs, call us, because we can’t do something about it if we don’t know about it.”
At 6:46 a.m. Tuesday, the UTRGV Police Department discovered a hate crime in the form of graffiti on the walkway in front of the Health Affairs West Building Tuesday on the Edinburg campus.
The graffiti consisted of the phrase “Good Night White Pride” in red spray paint and a stenciled image of President Donald Trump in black spray paint. The phrase is used by the group Antifa, or anti-fascists, who commonly graffiti the saying along with stenciled images, frequently of Nazis being assaulted.
“We don’t have any suspects on that, it’s kind of sitting there cold right now,” Munguia said. “We haven’t had any more occurrences. For now, we are trying to be vigilant and keep an eye out. The students probably know more than the police officers of who belongs here and who doesn’t, and if they see anything that’s suspicious … just give us a call and we’ll take a look at it. It may be nothing, it may be something.”
The UTRGV Police Department asks the campus community to contact them if they have any information related to these crimes at 665-7151 in Edinburg and 882-2222 in Brownsville.
