By JACQUELINE DURETT
Correspondent
SAYREVILLE — Quite a few residents of the Morgan section of town were pleasantly surprised this week to get a call from the Sayreville Police Department.
Those calls were to let them know that there had been a suspect identified in a string of recent home and car burglaries and that many of the items had been recovered.
Maddux Mason, 19, who lives in Sayreville, but has a South Amboy postal address, was charged with 23 counts of burglary and 14 counts of theft for incidents that happened the last week of July through Aug. 3.
The theft charges encompass actions such as taking items from a yard where the theft did not involve someone entering a car or a home, according to police.
“Nine out of 10 times this doesn’t happen,” said Lt. Dan Plumacher, who said it felt good to be able to reconnect residents with their missing items.
The investigation was led by Detective Douglas Sprague.
The news was welcomed by Tony Pattanayak, of Hoboken, who had his Fitbit electronic activity tracker stolen from his car while he was recently visiting his parents on Parker Court. He said he thought the vehicle had been locked, but was told by police he must be mistaken because the thief did not use any tools to break into the vehicles. Police recovered the Fitbit following Mason’s arrest.
But Pattanayak’s car was not the only vehicle entered at his parents’ home on Parker Court. His brother Jan’s vehicle was also hit, and from the car, both a backpack and toy elephant, a gift from India belonging to Jan’s 7-year-old daughter, were taken.
Pattanayak said his daughter was very upset by the theft and feared for her safety in the days following.
“Someone had violated her space,” Pattanayak said, adding she had trouble sleeping following the incident.
It was in fact the young girl who first realized something was wrong when she saw the papers from the backpack strewn across the lawn and thought a family member had done it. The family quickly realized that was not the case and alerted police.
Pattanayak said he was surprised that someone would be interested in a child’s backpack, but said he was told by police that the thief was likely looking for something to carry the stolen goods in.
He said when he found out the police called his mother to let residents know the items had been recovered, “I was pretty shocked,” he said.
He said he was very pleased with how seriously the police in his hometown took the situation, adding that he has had a negative experience with similar situations in Hoboken.
“That’s what I’m used to,” he said.
Pattanayak said his daughter was happy to get her items back, but was concerned about what would happen to the new backpack she received to replace her old one. She said she was thrilled to find out she’d be allowed to keep both.
Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of a burglary in the Morgan section between the end of July and beginning of August should contact Sprague at 732-525-5411 about recovering stolen items.
