Register recovered; suspect at large
Staff writer
A cash register stolen Feb. 25 from a storage shed in the 500 block of E. 9th St. in Peabody was recovered, but the theft, as well as the theft of a catalytic converter in Hillsboro the same day, remains unsolved.
Undersheriff Larry Starkey said the cash register was later discovered by a passerby near the corner of Limestone and 160th Rds.
County commissioner Randy Dallke, who owns the metal shop, storage building, and fireworks stand that was broken into, said his daughter, Roxanne Dallke, saw a red pickup pull out of the parking lot next to the storage shed as she was driving along 9th St.
Suspicious, she quickly turned around and checked the storage shed, where she found the door broken open. She turned back onto the street and drove the same direction as the pickup.
She called her father, who went out to search for the pickup.
When she was about two blocks away, she saw the pickup pull into an alley. She stopped in front of the house where she thought the pickup was, but could not see it.
She called dispatchers while in front of the house, identifying two suspects by name.
Randy Dallke didn’t see the pickup at the property either. He did see a place where a vehicle had driven through a yard and back onto the street.
Dallke said he went to the home of the person his daughter suspected had driven away from the storage shed. The pickup Roxanne described as being the one driven was inoperable, Dallke said.
Also unsolved is a theft of a catalytic converter reported three and a half hours later on the same day from a parking lot at Hillsboro’s Pizza Hut.
Starkey said that while neither case has been solved, it is believed the burglar is the same one who was later surprised by a neighbor while burglarizing a rural Halstead barn. That burglar, driving a red Toyota Tundra pickup, was captured on video at he fled the scene of the Halstead residence about 5 p.m.