Ventura County – Five months ago, in the hours just after midnight early Sunday, January 11, City of Thousand Oaks Police Dispatch received notice of a burglary in progress, pursuant to what Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Dan Hawes described as “a glass break alarm” at a retail store location in nearby Newbury Park.
Responding officers discovered a pair of broken windows at the Hirano Optical & Optometry store, but no suspect was present. The attempted burglary had been thwarted, according to Hawes, “due to an additional wall on the other side” of the windows which prevented complete ingress into the business premises. With considerable additional evidence indicating a serious attempt to reach past the partition wall for the purposes of removing merchandise, the Thousand Oaks Police Investigative Bureau began the task of researching leads as to the possible identities of those responsible for the criminal activity.
A full five months later, detectives “were able to link Dennis Wladyka to the burglary,” and on May 11th detectives from the TOPD Special Enforcement Unit found their man in the public offices of the Los Angeles Department of Social Services. He was interviewed, and apparently the answers he gave to detectives’ questions weren’t the right ones; he was arrested on the spot and transported to Ventura County Jail where he was booked on a charge of burglary, as well as on two outstanding warrants, with his bail set at $100,000.
Records show that Wladyka had been arrested for burglary in 2007 while he lived in Inglewood. While on parole, he reportedly broke into El Segundo’s The Lakes Golf Course pro shop, and stole 116 boxes of new golf balls. He had tried to escape by bicycle, but was spotted by police riding down El Segundo Blvd., according to the Mercury News. He was charged with burglary, possessing burglar’s tools, stolen property, and for identity theft as well. The next year, in September of 2012, he was arrested once again in El Segundo, this time for stealing bicycles, according to the Daily Breeze. In June of 2013 he was arrested once again, this time in Los Angeles, for burglary and possession of burglary tools.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
