Burglary On Malden

A reader writes in:

Uptown Update,

I thought you might want to share this with our community.

My wife and I live near the corner of Malden and Lawrence. Thursday afternoon at about 4:00 PM my wife looked out our sun porch window and saw 2 people breaking into our neighbors unit on the first floor. I was in my home office working when she yelled to me. I ran down the stairs and when I came out the door I tackled a black female that was coming out of the window with a laptop. The black male that was there helping her took off running. I pinned her to the ground while my wife called 911. She kept yelling "Ronte" but her cohort was long gone. While we waited for the cops she said kept yelling and cussing at us. She screamed "if I go to jail you MF'ers are DEAD". She did tell us that "Ronte" lives at Malden and Leland. I never did get her name but she was short, 15-17 years old, has short cornrows and is easily mistaken for a male. The cops showed up within 3-5 min and cuffed her. She told the cops that "Ronte" was her drug dealer and he was making her steal to pay her drug debt. The cops seemed to know who Ronte is and said that "he's a bad dude". They said they were going to book her on felony burglary. I am not sure if the death threats would be another charge or not.

As the cops were cuffing her, our neighbor came walking up the sidewalk with her 15 mo old son to see all the commotion She said she had just went for a walk and had not been gone more than 20 min. They have a 50 lb Sheppard mix that barks at everyone who comes to the door. The two thieves had moved a very heavy concrete flower urn over to the window to help get in. I actually do not think they ever entered the unit but were leaning in the window taking things off a desk.

Later we talked an upstairs neighbor who saw these two on our front stoop around 3:00 PM and asked them who they were looking for. They gave a name and were told no one by that name lives here. The two then left but must have circled back.

These two were very brazen to try to break into a place during the middle of the day, into a home with a dog, and having already been confronted by one of the unit owners. In hind sight it was probably a dumb idea to confront these people but had I not they would have both gotten away. It sickens me to see these people violate our sense of security. Had they gotten away I think we would be always worried whether they would be coming back.

Your Neighbor On Malden