By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Stillwater teenager on probation for car burglary has been ordered to appear in court on May 6 on charges of breaking into an occupied house and three vehicles in a Stillwater neighborhood on April 2.
Tyler Zachery Zane Flint, 19, remains in the Payne County Jail on $7,500 bail, a sheriff’s spokesman told KUSH this morning.
Flint was arrested at 1:26 a.m. on April 2 by Stillwater Police Sgt. David Duncan, who found him in a room adjacent to the garage of a burglarized house, his affidavit alleged.
“I retrieved Flint’s backpack and inside of it was medical marijuana and associated paraphernalia,” that the home’s occupant, who had a medical marijuana card, identified as his, the sergeant alleged in his affidavit.
In the room adjacent to the home’s garage, “Several of the drawers on his tool chest were open where Flint had ransacked the tool chest. He also showed me where he had kept the marijuana and paraphernalia on the workbench,” the sergeant alleged in his affidavit.
The man’s truck in the driveway had been ransacked — with the center console lid up and the glove box door open, the affidavit alleged. The man couldn’t find his garage door remote on the driver’s visor, but he finally located the remote tucked in the driver’s seat, the affidavit alleged.
“It is my belief that Flint entered the truck and used the remote to open the garage door,” the Stillwater sergeant wrote in his affidavit.
The investigation began when a Stillwater man found on the ground by his vehicle a wallet that he believed belonged to his next-door neighbor, who identified it as his, the affidavit alleged. The neighbor found that his vehicle had been ransacked and the only thing taken was a medicine bottle with loose change, the affidavit said.
“Due to it being relatively early in the evening, I believed the suspect(s) might still be active in the area. I left eastbound on 28th to search the area,” the sergeant wrote in his affidavit.
As the officer approached the intersection of 27th and Mar Vista, he saw that a house “had the garage door open and the lights were on and there were two motorcycles and a white SUV in the garage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure dressed in all black wearing a black backpack standing by the driver’s door of the SUV. He quickly moved out of my sight into a doorway.
“I was almost certain the figure went into the room adjacent to the garage, but I was not positive,” the sergeant wrote in his affidavit.
When the occupant of the house told police officers, who had arrived to assist, “there should be no one in the garage and no one had just entered the house,” the sergeant, along with four other officers, “entered the garage with our service weapons drawn,” the affidavit alleged.
Flint, who had discarded the backpack and had a black glove on only his left hand, “followed our commands,” and was arrested, the sergeant wrote in his affidavit.
“He admitted to breaking into cars in the area, but he refused to tell us where. Officer Merrill took off his glove and inside of the glove was $45 in denominations of two $20 bills and one $5 bill,” the affidavit alleged.
Police then canvassed the neighborhood and located eight ransacked vehicles, the affidavit alleged.
If convicted of breaking into a house while the occupant was inside, Flint could be sentenced to 10 years to life in prison. If convicted of breaking into three vehicles, Flint could be sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Eleven months earlier, Flint had been convicted of breaking into a car in 2017 in Payne County, for which he was given a six-month jail term followed by two and one-half years of probation, court records show.
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