Homes Burglarized, Cars Stolen While Residents Slept

A family on Pear Street in the southern end of Lawrence Township awoke Thursday morning to find that their home had been burglarized as they slept and their two cars had been stolen, along with the vehicles’ keys and $3,300 worth of small electronics, township police revealed today.

Another house just a few doors away on the Trenton side of the same street was also burglarized early Thursday while residents of that home were sleeping and more electronics and two more vehicles were stolen, Trenton police confirmed.

Residents of the house in the 700 block of Pear Street in Lawrence Township called police at 7:37 a.m. Thursday (May 24) to report the break-in, township police spokesman Lt. Mark Ubry said.

“They went to bed. When they woke up, they realized someone had entered their house,” Ubry said.

Missing from the house were assorted electronics like a television, camera and laptop computer, he said. Also missing were the family’s two cars, a 1997 Buick and a 1999 Pontiac, he said, noting that the burglars had stolen the vehicles by taking keys from the house.

Both the Buick and the Pontiac were later discovered abandoned in Trenton late Thursday afternoon, Ubry said, adding that police will be “processing” the vehicles for evidence.

Preliminary investigation by township Detective Robert Potter and Officer Sean Kerins suggests the burglars gained entry to the house by way of an unlocked window, according to Ubry.

Multiple residents were home asleep at the time of the burglary and at least one of the bedrooms in the house was ransacked but it is not known if the burglars entered any of the rooms where the people were actually sleeping at the time, he said.

Exactly when the break-in took place is not yet known, he said, but residents told police they remembered hearing a noise in the house about 2 a.m. that, at the time, each assumed was the sound of another member of the family moving around.

The other break-in also occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning on the Trenton side of the 700 block of Pear Street.

Officer Pete Szpakowski, a Trenton Police spokesman, said two flat-screen televisions, a laptop and other property were stolen from that home, along with two vehicles – both Toyotas – and their keys.

Due to the similarities of the crimes, police from Lawrence Township and Trenton said they plan to collaborate and share the findings of their investigations.

Anyone with information about the crimes is asked to call Lawrence Township Police at (609) 896-1111, the Trenton Police Criminal Investigations Bureau at (609) 989-4155, or the Trenton Police confidential tip line at (609) 989-3663.