Man arrested for alleged housebreak after stop
WOONSOCKET – A routine police stop led to the arrest of a man wanted for breaking into an occupied house on Sweet Avenue last month and assaulting a woman who surprised him rummaging around her mother’s bedroom.
Tommy Lee Jones, 41, of 54 First Ave., was also arrested on a new charge of possession of methamphetamine, a powerful form of speed.
Patrolman Joseph Wasilewski saw Jones walking on Arnold Street about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday and stopped him for a warrant check because he thought Jones’ behavior was suspicious. Minutes earlier, Wasilewski had seen Jones get into a vehicle heading into the city, and now he was walking in the same area again.
Police say Jones broke into a home at 24 Sweet Ave.
during the daytime on May 30 while a man was sleeping inside. The man’s sister came home and discovered the intruder – a stranger to her – touching things on her moth-
er’s dresser.
As the intruder fled the residence, he allegedly shoved the woman aside as he headed for the door. The woman’s brother woke up during the commotion and tried to chase the suspect, to no avail.
The victims of the housebreak weren’t the first clue police had that something was amiss. A neighbor with a network of surveillance cameras around his property called police first, telling them someone had just darted through his backyard as if he were “running from something and hiding from the police.” A few minutes later, the break was reported to dispatch.
The neighbor supplied police with a photograph of the suspect wearing a Patriots jersey and a baseball cap. Police searched the neighborhood and later found a jersey on the ground that looked similar to the one worn by the suspect.
Detectives showed the image to members of the Woonsocket Police Department’s undercover narcotics squad,
and they recognized the man in the Patriots jersey as Jones. The woman he allegedly shoved at 24 Sweet Ave. later identifed another image of Jones from a photo spread as the man she saw in her home, and police obtained a warrant for his arrest.
Upon taking him into custody Tuesday, Wasilewski said police were conducting a precautionary search of Jones when they found a small glassine bag in his pocket containing what looked like a “small, white-colored rock.”
Jones referred to the item as a “pebble” and spontaneously uttered to officers that he planned to sell it later that night.
During a preliminary appearance in Sixth District Court, Jones was also charged as a violator of his probation on a 2014 conviction for breaking and entering in Lincoln. He’s due back in court on July 3 for a hearing on that charge, according to the judiciary’s web site.