Gun theft shuts mall, puts SWAT on scene
Teen arrested hours after he was stopped
A 16-year-old accused of breaking into Dick’s Sporting Goods and stealing a rifle was arrested at his Everett home yesterday after a massive SWAT response forced local schools to shelter in place and roiled rush-hour traffic for hours, authorities said.
An officer responding to a 4:20 a.m. burglar alarm at Dick’s at the Square One Mall in Saugus found a broken window and, inside the store, a male suspect with a long gun and several bags of what appeared to be ammunition, Saugus police Chief Domenic J. DiMella said.
The officer called for backup, triggering a police response that included a SWAT team and K-9 units, which searched the store while local schools sheltered in place, DiMella said. But by then, the suspect had slipped out of the store and left in a car, police said.
“The Saugus Police Department takes all burglaries and robberies very seriously,” the chief said, “but when you have firearms involved, it rises to another level, which necessitated the large-scale but measured response of our mutual-aid partners.”
Less than an hour after the break-in, while police surrounded the store, other officers found a 16-year-old walking in a different community, stopped him, asked for ID and took down his name and address but let him go, police said.
“If you don’t have probable cause to detain someone, you can’t violate his civil rights,” said John Guilfoil, a spokesman for the Saugus police. “The burden is on police to put together a case.”
Later, after police reviewed surveillance video from the store, they found that the suspect’s clothing matched those of the boy who had been stopped, and they traced him back to his home in Everett, where he was arrested at about 11:30 a.m., Di- Mella said.
The rifle was later found where it had been ditched in the woods near the mall.
The teen is due to be arraigned in juvenile court today on charges of breaking and entering at night to commit a felony, malicious destruction of property over $250 and larceny of a firearm. His name was not released because of his age.
After two sweeps of the mall, police were still searching late yesterday afternoon for the gun, which the boy apparently was able to pry loose from a locked rack in the store, the chief said.
“They’ve been storing guns there like this for a long time, and it’s never been an issue,” he said, “but we are going to go over that from top to bottom and make sure this doesn’t happen again.”