BOCA RATON — After a lengthy investigation, detectives from the Boca Raton Police Services Department arrested a suspect in connection with multiple car burglaries in Boca Raton. He is suspected of additional crimes throughout Palm Beach County, said authorities.
On October 4, police were called to investigate a car burglary. The victim said someone broke into his 2011 Jaguar and stole a brown leather briefcase, an iPad, a badge, an identification card and a checkbook. The victim went to the Apple Store and found that the internal tracking of the iPad indicated that it was in the SW 85th Street area in Pembroke Pines.
Detectives went to the area of the iPad signal and eventually narrowed it to an apartment. Contact was made with the occupant of one apartment who said he had purchased it from someone named Steven and provided investigators with a phone number. A check of phone records led investigators to another number that came back to a woman who was contacted by detectives, but she was uncooperative, police said.
An Internet search of the woman’s Facebook page found she listed a relative with a similar name. While searching through past cases it was discovered that the police were called to the Wyndham Hotel Oct.to investigate a child wandering around the hallways alone. That child’s parents were identified as Stephen Johnson Sr., 24, and Amanda Barrera. Many of the recent auto burglaries were near the Wyndham Hotel, police said.
Eventually it was determined that Johnson was booking rooms through the travel website Hotwire.com and stayed at several hotels inBoca Raton. Each time, multiple auto burglaries were reported in the hotel parking lots and surrounding community.
On October 25 an auto burglary occurred in a neighborhood near the Best Western on North Federal Highway. Officers checking the hotel parking lot found a car belonging to Johnson. Detectives approached him when he came out to his car.