NEWBURY PARK : Sweet-Toothed Thief Breaks Into Vehicles

While residents at the Las Casitas condominium slept, an auto burglar with a sweet tooth and a knack for removing the window of a car without a sound managed to break into four vehicles, sheriff’s deputies said Friday.

Sometime late Thursday or early Friday, a thief removed the back windows of the vehicles parked at the Newbury Park development and then removed the stereos or compact-disc units in the dashboards, Sheriff’s Sgt. Kitty Hoberg said

In one of the cars, only candy bars were taken.The vehicles, including two pickup trucks, were parked in carports bordering an alley that runs between Paseo Esmeralda and Paseo La Perla, Hoberg said.

The car owners later found their back windows, intact and unbroken, beside their vehicles, she said.

“So we go from looking for kids who like candy bars to specialists who know how to remove windows,” the sergeant said.

The burglaries come a week after sheriff’s deputies arrested three suspects in connection with 13 auto burglaries in the Moorpark area. On Sept. 30, deputies arrested a 19-year-old man and two juveniles on suspicion of vehicle burglary.

Hoberg said detectives feel the three were involved with 13 auto burglaries, in which cellular phones were removed from unlocked cars and then offered for sale the next day at school. “It’s one of the biggest problems we have in (Thousand Oaks),” she said. “The crimes are happening more frequently.”

Of the latest burglaries, Hoberg added: “Obviously, these people are very proficient. . . . They may be involved in the window removal or stereo business.”