Anthony Engel and Christopher Mullins – Ventura County booking photos
Ventura County – Sometimes you just can’t sleep at night. Maybe you get the itch to just take a walk in the cool, crisp late-night-early-morning air. Maybe you have a friend who enjoys a walk through the local neighborhood at 4:00 a.m. as well, so you go for a stroll together. But a local neighbor—perhaps a fellow insomniac—spots the two of you walking around and considers your presence suspicious in nature, and so calls the police to check you out.
This is exactly how things might have been described in the impromptu explanations given by Christopher Mullins, 25, and Anthony Engle, 19, when they were confronted by officers of the Thousand Oaks Police Department in the early morning hours of Friday, October 16th. Pursuant to what Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Peter Frank described to the media as the concerns of “an alert Thousand Oaks citizen” who called the cops to report “suspicious activity,” the late-night stroll of Mullins, a transient, and Engle, a resident of Simi Valley, became the subject of a field investigation by the responding officers.
It didn’t take the cops long to determine that both men were in possession of stolen property “connected to a series of thefts from vehicles that had occurred in the area,” whereupon they were placed under arrest. Both Mullins and Engle were transported to Ventura County Jail, where they were booked on charges of theft from a vehicle, prowling, possession of burglary tools, conspiracy to commit a crime, and vandalism, with their bail set at $20,000 each.
Photos: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
