Man Arrested in T-Mobile Store Burglaries, Including St. Louis Park

A Brooklyn Center man wearing “distinctive” shoes, arrested lurking outside a T-Mobile store in Maple Grove, has been charged with burglarizing T-Mobile stores in Golden Valley, St. Louis Park and Columbia Heights.

Anthony Jerome Thompson, also known as Michael Chapman, 36, is charged with three counts of felony third-degree burglary, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, signed by Golden Valley Police Officer Dan Pacholke, officers were called to the T-Mobile store on Olson Memorial Highway on Oct. 21 after a broken-glass alarm was activated.

The store manager told police that five phones had been stolen, and one tampered with. Surveillance video showed a man wearing a black coat with a gray hood and “distinctive black and white shoes,” according to the complaint.

At about 2 a.m. Oct. 23, a Maple Grove police officer spotted a man behaving suspiciously outside a T-Mobile store in the 7800 block of Main Street. The officer arrested the man, subsequently identified as Thompson.

Officers searched Thompson and found a hammer and a plastic bag in his front pocket, along with a cell phone. His shoes and coat matche3d the description of the suspect in the Golden Valley burglary, and a T-Mobile regional loss prevention manager told police that the phone had been stolen in the burglary of a T-Mobile store in Columbia Heights.

Investigators determined that Thompson was involved in two separate burglaries of the T-Mobile store in the 4700 block of Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park on Oct. 17 and Oct. 22, according to the complaint. Police say Thompson broke the store’s window and removed phones, and in surveillance video from each incident, he was wearing the same black-and-white shoes.

Thompson admitted to being the person in the St. Louis Park surveillance video, according to the complaint.

Thompson’s criminal record includes felony convictions for first-degree property damage in 2001, fifth-degree drug sales in 2008 and theft last February.

Thompson remains in the Hennepin County Jail on a $10,000 bond. An omnibus hearing in his case is scheduled Oct. 31 in Hennepin County District Court.