PETALUMA – On Thursday May 14, Petaluma Police Department (PPD) issued a News Release about the arrest of a suspect in connection with multiple burglaries.
Just before 3:00 am Thursday, PPD officers responded to an audible burglary alarm which sounded at My iPhone Store located at 6 Petaluma Boulevard North. Officers found no sign of forced entry and representatives from the business could not be contacted. The officers had cleared the incident without realizing that a crime had in fact occurred.
The Computer Repair Shop at 444 Petaluma Blvd. North.
A little more than an hour later a citizen observed a suspicious person exit the Computer Repair Shop located at 444 Petaluma Boulevard North carrying electronics. The citizen witness confronted the suspect, who in turn threatened to harm the witness. The witness left the area concerned over his personal safety. He did not have immediate access to a phone, but contacted police twenty minutes later after walking home.
Officers responded and searched the area for the person described by the witness. Officer Dan Miller located the suspect trying to hide behind a parked vehicle near 610 Petaluma Boulevard North. The suspect was positively identified as the suspect at the Computer Repair Shop, where officers had found signs of forced entry and evidence of a burglary. The suspect was also found to have property on him that linked him to the burglary at My iPhone Store.
The suspect was identified as 37-year-old Dean Morgan of Petaluma. He was arrested and booked at the Sonoma County Jail with bail set at $30,000. Morgan faces charges of two counts of burglary and one count of making criminal threats.
In a second incident early Friday, a PPD graveyard patrol in the vicinity of Clegg Street found two prowlers in a closed business park at about 1:30 am. Officers found that the suspects were in possession of bolt cutters, and were believed to be attempting to break into a nearby storage container. Both suspects were arrested and charged with possession of burglary tools. One was found to be in possession of methamphetamine.
The prowlers were identified as 31-year-old Sean Moynihan of Petaluma, and 36-year-old Allen Higginbottom of Rohnert Park. Moynihan was also charged with possession of a controlled substance, and Higginbottom was a charged with a violation of probation. He had been arrested in July of last year for possession of a controlled substance. Both were booked into Sonoma County Jail. No bail information is available at this time.
