WINTER PARK, Fla. – Burglars have hit more homes in Winter Park, less than a month after police issued a crime alert for eight burglaries.
Five burglaries have taken place throughout February. The first happened on Feb. 2 on Lyman Avenue, then on Feb. 5 another burglary took place on Orange Avenue. On Feb. 10, a third burglary happened on Whitesell Drive, the fourth took place last week on Feb. 14 on Interlachen Drive, and the most recent took place on Feb.18 on Preserve Point Drive in the Windsong neighborhood.
The Lyman Avenue burglary is the only case to result in an arrest, the others are still active investigations.
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“I think the only thing that we’re seeing that we could probably prevent and work on is a lot of the residences appear to be vacant,” said Winter Park Police Deputy Chief Lisa Suepat. “There isn’t proper lighting. There’s packages piling up in the front door. Garbage cans aren’t being taken in for a day or two. So from outside looking in, you know, opportunist person, that’s looking to commit a crime. It appears that there’s nobody home and that’s what they’re targeting.”
Suepat said they’re encouraging people to call in any suspicious activity.
Right now the agency does not believe any of the February burglaries are connected to the January crime spree, where eight burglaries took place within a 2-mile radius of the Phelps/Lakemont Avenue corridor.
“We’re kind of cautious on what information to release, because right now a lot of the residents, what we’re seeing is they have tunnel vision,” Suepat said. “They’re very focused on the past crime spree that we spoke of. Those suspects we do not believe are involved in the recent residential burglaries. So we want people calling in suspicious activity, but not necessarily just focusing on a particular group or person.”
We spoke to one neighbor in the Windsong neighborhood, where the most recent burglary took place, who said he’s doubling down on home security as a result of the recent increase in crime.
“It’s extremely frustrating to see this happen again and again and again,” said Brian Fuselier. “We are doing everything we can to stop this. But so far, the police have not been able to stop it. We have not been able to stop it. But we need to up things right now. I can’t emphasize this, I’m going to be changing this myself today, and that is we have an alarm system inside our home, it will now occur outside of our home. I want my neighbors to become irritated with me if my alarm goes off. Not in a bad way, in a good way. Irritated to me so that they have to do something quickly.”
We asked Winter Park police if they had any leads in both the January and February cases, and they said they are still actively working those cases and that no further details are available at this time.
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