Palo Alto Police arrested a 35-year-old man for burglary of an occupied home on Monday afternoon after he entered an unlocked house and began rummaging around. No one was physically injured.
On Monday, August 1, 2022, at about 3:40 p.m., the police dispatch center received a call from a resident reporting an in-progress burglary at his home in the 1100 block of Ramona Street. The victim, a man in his seventies, reported that he had interrupted an unknown man rifling through items in his living room. The suspect had then run out of the house. Officers arrived on scene about a minute later and detained the suspect without incident nearby.
The investigation revealed that the suspect had entered the residence via an unlocked front door. When the victim heard his front door open, he went to investigate and found the suspect inside the home looking through his things. The victim yelled at the suspect to get out of his house, and the suspect ran away. The suspect fled without taking anything.
Police booked 35-year-old Wayne Darko of San Jose into the Santa Clara County Main Jail for residential burglary and an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for resisting arrest out of Santa Cruz County.
Police had also contacted the same suspect at about 7:47 a.m. that morning after he was called in as a trespasser in the 300 block of Kingsley Avenue for sleeping in the backyard of a home. At that time, police cited and released the suspect for an outstanding misdemeanor warrant out of Sunnyvale for vandalism, theft, trespass, and resisting arrest and opted not to book him for the Santa Cruz County warrant (which was not eligible for citation release). The resident opted not to make a private person’s arrest for trespass.
