East Ridge police are investigating a burglary at the city’s post office after workers there discovered post office boxes had been forced open.
According to a police report, on Sunday morning the manager of the facility at 1510 Maxwell Road discovered that about 41 mailboxes had been forcibly entered between 6:30 p.m. on Saturday evening and when the manager arrived on Sunday morning at about 8:30. The suspects had entered the unlocked post office _ which has no video surveillance cameras _ and pried individual boxes open, likely removing mail from them.
Investigators began identifying individual boxes that had been entered and scouring the facility for evidence. The manager provided police with a partial list of names of who the boxes were rented to. Latent prints were lifted from a key tag found in one of the boxes and those boxes identified as having been potentially forced closed following the entry.
A supplement to the original police report states that police returned to the post office Sunday afternoon when postal service workers discovered a significant amount of mail in wastebaskets inside the facility. The mail in the baskets may have been discarded by the suspects after finding it had no use to them. The report states that “negotiable checks of varying amounts, valued in the thousands of dollars, were additionally found discarded by the suspect(s).”
Investigators filtered through this discarded mail looking for “items of more probative value to the investigation,” the report states. Police were unable to lift fingerprints from several discarded Christmas cards.
The manager of the post office told investigators that the suspects had likely stuck their arms through the originally opened box in an effort to remove mail from the back side of the neighboring boxes. The mail found lying on the floor in the sorting room was discovered to have been disturbed from boxes which had not been forcibly entered from the public side of the facility.
The report states that police later spoke with Diane Bracken, the local Postal Inspector, who told them that the East Brainerd Road post office had also been burglarized on the same night. Inspector Bracken told police that the East Brainerd location should have video evidence as a surveillance system was installed there recently.
_ Party Mart Robbed: East Ridge police are investigating an armed robbery at the Party Mart at 6006 Ringgold Rd. According to a police report, officers went to the convenience store on the evening of Dec. 9. The clerk in the store told police that two black males entered the store and bought two beers. After the purchase, one of the men produced a handgun and the pair took the cash register from the business. The men ran from the store on foot. The report states the store had no video surveillance cameras.
_ 3345 Gleason Dr.: Police were dispatched to the address Wednesday on a burglary. According to a police report, the resident told officers that she left her home at 10:45 a.m. and when she returned at 9 p.m. the back door had been kicked in. When the victim went inside she immediately noticed that a 55-inch flat screen television was missing from the living room, as well as a 42-inch TV from the bedroom. In addition a sub-woofer system was missing. The victim told police she had no idea of anyone who would break into her home. The report states that nothing else appeared to have been disturbed during the break-in.
