Burglary charges for three Urbana teens

Burglary charges for three Urbana teens

URBANA — Three Urbana teens have been charged in juvenile court with a total of three residential burglaries in that city, but police believe they may have been involved in others throughout Champaign-Urbana in the last three months.

A release from Urbana police said the teens, ages 17, 16 and 14, were found outside their home in north Urbana Tuesday evening by Urbana patrol officers.

One of those boys matched the description from a burglary that occurred Monday at the Urbana home of Paralympian Megan Blunk. During that burglary, an eyewitness saw suspects running from the house and was able to give police a detailed description.

Police ultimately searched a home in northwest Urbana and found nearly 100 items that had been stolen in at least eight burglaries in Champaign and Urbana since late July, mostly during daylight hours.

The recovered property included iPods, computers, cell phones and ammunition. Police are still matching up the stolen items with specific burglaries.

“We’re not even done going through all the property we have,” said Urbana Police Sgt. Harley Rutledge.

So far, one of the teens was charged with residential burglaries on Sept. 23 on North Busey Avenue and Blunk’s on Monday; the 17-year-old and the 16-year-old were charged with a residential burglary in the 700 block of North Broadway Avenue on Oct. 14. The older teen was also charged with possession of firearm ammunition.

In the North Busey burglary, prosecutors allege that the 14-year-old also stole two musical instruments valued in excess of $10,000.

The 14-year-old was the only youth charged in connection with the break-in to Blunk’s home.At detention hearings on Wednesday, Judge Tom Difanis ruled that it was “a matter of immediate and urgent necessity” that all three boys continue to be held in detention until trials scheduled for later this month.

Police are still reviewing reports and additional charges could follow against other youths.

The 17-year-old charged Wednesday is currently on probation in two different juvenile cases.

Authorities ask anyone with more information to call the Urbana Police Department at 217-384-2320. Callers can remain anonymous by calling Crime Stoppers at 217-373-TIPS or text “CCTip” plus the information to CRIMES (274637).

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s