VENTURA COUNTY — Since April 2017, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Thousand Oaks and Moorpark patrol stations have been investigating a rash of residential burglaries occurring late at night at homes that were believed to have been the target of organized, methodical surveillance prior to the break-ins.
Evidence of careful planning on the part of suspects included backyard security lights that had been tampered with, and the fact that the burglaries themselves took only minutes to perpetrate.
According to VCSD spokesman Detective Andja Marco, on May 1, 2017, Moorpark Police detectives—conducting increased patrols of the areas where burglaries had recently been reported—made contact with four members of an alleged criminal street gang operating out of Los Angeles who appeared to be casing things.
At that time, Los Angeles residents Marcus Gilmore, 20, Kaylyn Breedlove, 22, Jermale Henry, 20, and Jamel Freeman, 19, were placed under arrest in connection with “more than 20 burglaries in the Southern California area.”
With those four in custody, at this point detectives “used physical and electronic surveillance techniques as well as DNA evidence”—including forensic examinations of cell phones and recorded jailhouse phone calls between Breedlove and convicted burglar 24-year-old Charles Sanford—to identify a total of seven suspects in “an overall conspiracy to commit multiple residential burglaries” throughout Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
In addition to Breedlove, Henry, Gilmore, and Freeman, 19 year-old Los Angeles residents Kamell Lawson, Romeo Jackson, and Ricky Perkins—already in custody in L.A. County Jail on other charges—were all identified as part of the suspect group.
Felony arrest warrants were promptly issued for Jackson and Lawson, while Breedlove, Gilmore, and Freeman were transported to Ventura County Jail where their bail was set at $500,000 each. Henry and Perkins are held in L.A. County Jail with no bail specified.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Sheriff
