Palo Alto: Suspect arrested in recent burglaries, one more suspect sought
ABOVE: Gustavo Gomez Alvarado / Photos: City of Palo Alto
Palo Alto Police have announced the arrest of one of two outstanding suspects in a series of recent burglaries.
31-year-old Gustavo Gomez Alvarado of San Jose, whom police say is on active probation for vehicle theft and narcotics possession, was identified as a suspect in two residential burglaries in the College Terrace area in October.
The first burglary occurred just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, November 10, on the 2300 block of Cornell Street. A woman had awoken to find that her garage had been broken into and two bicycles stolen. She then reviewed her home security footage to find that, a few hours earlier, two men had forced their way into the garage through a side door and taken the bikes while she slept.
Officers later found two bikes abandoned on the sidewalk a few houses away, one of them having been stolen from the woman’s garage but the other reportedly having been stolen from the Stanford University campus earlier that day. They also convassed the area for additional home surveillance footage, eventually finding footage that showed the two suspects arriving and leaving the area in a white pick-up truck.
Meanwhile, around the same time, officers were also responding to a report of a vehicle having been stolen overnight from the 2000 block of Amherst Street. They quickly realized that it was, in fact, the same vehicle shown in the footage from Cornell Street.
The next morning, November 11, at around 6:30 a.m., police received a call about a suspicious person who tripped a home security alarm on the 2300 block of Cornell – the same area from the day before. A woman living at the house told police that a door to the rear house, which was still under construction and unoccupied, had been open and that she’d seen a man fleeing through her backyard.
As they searched the area, officers found the white pick-up truck abandoned on California Avenue and realized it had been driven recently — the hood was still warm.
Shortly thereafter, officers detained one of the suspects — later identified as Alvarado — on the 3000 block of Hansen Way. Alvarado reportedly had the bicycle stolen from Stanford in his possession, as well as burglary tools, paraphernalia, and an undisclosed amount of methamphetamine.
Police say the bicycle was returned to its owner and that Alvarado was arrested and booked at the Santa Clara County Main Jail. The second suspect is still outstanding.
