Robbery, burglaries vex Cape

Money stolen from taxi driver at knifepoint in the latest of a string of crimes.

CAPE ELIZABETH — The knifepoint robbery of a taxicab driver in Cape Elizabeth was just the latest in a string of crimes, including a home invasion, to occur in Maine’s most affluent community last week.

The robbery occurred just past 1 a.m. on Dec. 21, when three men picked up in downtown Portland made the taxicab driver hand over his cash box and cell phone. Unfortunately, the driver was unable to tell police exactly where the crime occurred.

According to Capt. Brent Sinclair of the Cape Elizabeth Police Department, the driver asked for an address, but his charges – described by the driver only as “white males” – declined, preferring instead to give turn by turn directions. The circuitous trip lasted about 30 minutes.

“Whether they were intentionally trying to confuse him, we don’t know, but he could not recreate the route,” said Sinclair last week. “We did have a bit of a language barrier and got an interpreter. We tried to have him drive the route, but he got all turned around. At one point he thought it was in one area, near the South Portland line, then, later, he thought it was someplace else on the other side of town.

“We just have not been able to determine where the incident actually took place,” said Sinclair, who declined to name the taxi company involved, or provide a description of the weapon.  The cell phone has so far proven untraceable, Sinclair said, and the exact amount of money taken is still undetermined.

One of the robbers sat in front with the taxi driver. He was described as “20-25 years old, with brown hair, wearing jeans and a hooded, white sweatshirt.”

Sinclair said the Cape Elizabeth incident remains under investigation. On Monday, police reported no progress on the taxicab robbery. “We do have some information but I’d rather not disclose that at this point,” he said.

However, there was some good news, as no additional break-ins were reported over the holiday weekend.

The police, however, were busy investigating a recent series of burglaries.

Between 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 15, and 6 a.m. Friday, Dec. 16, two homes and a car, located within a mile radius on Mitchell and Stonegate Roads, were burglarized. In two of the incidents, occurring with three hours of each other, the burglar was interrupted in the act.

Sometime between 8 and 10 p.m. on Dec. 15, someone entered a garage on Stonegate Road and reportedly took two “black, ladies coats” and an undetermined amount of alcohol. By time the homeowner discovered the theft, two other area homes had been hit.

The second incident occurred at about 3 a.m. the next morning, also on Stonegate Road. In this case, the homeowner, reportedly awoken by barking dogs, rose to interrupt the burglary in progress. Sinclair says it is unclear if the burglar, who fled the scene, ever actually entered the home, but added the house was apparently unlocked.

As in the knifepoint robbery, the description did not give police much to go on. All the homeowner was able to say for certain was that the burglar was a “white male, with dark, curly hair, dressed in dark cloths.”

Sinclair said a K-9 search dog was called in from a neighboring department. “It got a direction of travel,” said Sinclair, “but lost the track. We were on scene for about an hour and a half.”

Not long after police cleared the area, an unlocked car was burglarized on Mitchell Road, less than a mile from the search area. At about 6 a.m., a woman “disturbed a male subject inside a family vehicle” who immediately “fled the area.” Although similarly clad in dark cloths, according to Sinclair, no other description could be obtained. Sinclair said “nothing of significant value” was taken from the unlocked car. It’s unclear, he said, if the man was actually rifling through it at the time he was “disturbed,” or if he may have been sleeping inside the vehicle. It’s also possible the man could have simply been laying low following the first interrupted burglary.

“I don’t think we’re ruling anything out, there’s no evidence that links them together, but based on proximity, we think all three incidents may be related,” said Sinclair.

However, while the car burglar was said to be carrying a backpack, the description of the home invader included no similar accessory.

The Mitchell Road area also was hit by similar home invasions about six weeks ago, when two unlocked homes were entered in the early morning hours. As with the Stonegate Road incident, the residents were home and asleep at the time.

“It’s always unsettling when people come into your home and word has spread throughout the neighborhood,” said Sinclair. “People have been contacting each other through email and I’ve had conversations with a couple of residents.

“People should be concerned,” said Sinclair, “but we have no reason to believe that whoever has been entering these homes is violent. The message I’d like to get out is that the key to all of these incidents is that it’s all happening to houses that are unlocked. So, lock your doors, lock your windows, lock your vehicles.

“Don’t be an easy target,” says Sinclair. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt, or the perpetrator, even, if he should pick the wrong house.”

Thieves have been making their rounds during the day, targeting homes that are either vacant, or empty.

Scarborough Detective Rick Rouse says his town always sees a bump in burglaries this time of year. There have been more than 20 in town since Oct. 1. While Capt. Sinclair said Cape Elizabeth also sees a spike in crime in the weeks before Christmas, including burglaries, the practice of entering homes when people are home appears to be something new.

“Really I can’t think of any other recent cases,” he said. “I’d have to go back 15 years, maybe, to think of a time when this kind of thing happened in Cape Elizabeth.

“We had a lot of burglaries last year, literally right up until Christmas Eve, with people taking Christmas gifts out of people’s cars – things like that. But going right into people’s homes at night when they’re there, that’s the part that is uncommon, and most unsettling.”

One other burglary took place in Cape last Friday, although Sinclair said it appears to be unrelated to the other three, in part because it took place some distance away, in the Shore Acres subdivision, but also because it involved forced entry, with a door “pried open.” In addition, there is reason to believe the victim may know the criminals.

“I can’t really go into detail, but they seemed do be looking for something in particular, a certain amount of money that they may have believed to be present.”

It wasn’t. All that was taken was “some change,” said Sinclair.