By Bob Brownne
TRACY — A burglary arrest Friday in Tracy led police to a house full of stolen furniture in Modesto and evidence


that might help solve dozens of home burglaries.

On Tuesday, Tracy police Detective Dan Pasquale showed off a storage locker filled with about $100,000 worth of loot, including leather-upholstered sofas, grandfather clocks and wide-screen televisions. He said police have even more property to review, and the bust might help Tracy solve 25 or more Tracy break-ins that have occurred since November, plus dozens more elsewhere in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

“We’ve already identified five victims, for sure,” Pasquale said. “The San Joaquin Sheriff’s Department has at least 40 (break-ins) with the exact same method of operation.”

Police got a break in the case when a woman on Monique Street reported a burglary at her neighbor’s house. That led to a traffic stop on one of the suspected burglars, which led to a search warrant of the Modesto house.

Pasquale said that since November, police have investigated a string of break-ins where burglars targeted houses for sale. Pasquale said the burglars also targeted homes of commuters or homes of people who were on vacation. The homes were mostly on the edges of town near major thoroughfares, he added.

The break-ins typically were not reported until the homeowner returned.

“Usually, they would come in three or four days later,” Pasquale said. “They would walk in the house, and everything was gone. Usually there was a back window broken.”

Pasquale said that in some cases, neighbors reported afterward that they had seen U-Haul trucks and men who appeared to be professional movers.

But Friday, the suspected burglars got sloppy. A woman on the 2000 block of Monique Street called police at about 10 a.m. and said she saw three men, one in a white Honda, another in a primer-gray Toyota pickup, take a television from a neighbor’s house and put it in the back of the truck. The woman also saw that the sliding glass door on the house was smashed.

Police stopped the Honda a half-hour later at Chrisman and Linne roads and arrested the driver. Detectives then got a search warrant for the man’s home on Vernon Avenue in Modesto, where they found the other two men and more property that appeared to be stolen.

Police arrested Fermin Guerrero, 32, Daniel Garcia Rodriguez, 25, and Salvador Velazquez Martinez, 53, all on suspicion of burglary, possession of stolen property and conspiracy.

Police made the connection to other local burglaries after crime-scene technician Deborah Martin arrived at the Modesto house to record descriptions of recovered property. She immediately recognized a four-poster bed that had been reported stolen from Calaveras Lane two months ago.

Contact reporter Bob Brownne at brownne@tracypress.com.