Photo: COVER – Stock Image; IN-STORY – Evidence Collected (Courtesy Thousand Oaks Police Special Enforcement Unit)
Written By: Robert J. McCullough
Since February of this year, a pair of out-of-area residential burglars have managed to conduct their illegal business throughout Ventura County while avoiding apprehension and arrest. That all came to an end on September 7th , however, with the arrest of 22-year-old Palmdale resident Lewis McCants.
Both McCants and his confederate, 22-year-old Los Angeles resident Tyrone Green, became the focus of attention by the Thousand Oaks Police Investigative Unit and the Career Criminals unit pursuant to multiple burglary reports involving forcible entries and stolen property throughout the county over the past seven months.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Det. Sgt. Laura Natoli, law enforcement teams employed multiple technologies and techniques to track down and identify the nefarious pair, including “video surveillance, searching police databases, writing data-based search warrants” and working closely with multiple police agencies. Once McCants and Green were identified as likely suspects, research into their criminal histories indicated that Green was on “active parole terms for robbery,” McCants had prior robbery convictions, and “both have associations to gangs in Los Angeles.”
On August 23, 2022, Thousand Oaks Police Department detectives made contact with Green at his Los Angeles residence and arrested him on suspicion of conspiracy and burglary. He was transported to Ventura County Jail, where he remains in custody with his bail set at $70,000.
Two weeks later, on September 7th , detectives contacted McCants at his Palmdale residence with a search warrant in hand. The ensuing search lead to the discovery of multiple items of stolen property as well as “two loaded firearms, a loaded gun magazine and an expandable police baton.” He was taken into custody and transported to Ventura County Jail where he was booked on multiple robbery, conspiracy, and firearms charges with his bail set at $100,000.
