BYU NewsNet - Police Briefs

Burglary

For the second time in as many weeks, Orem Police arrested a 22-year-old Lindon man for burglary. Kevin Thacker, who police caught May 20 attempting to steal cigarettes from the cab of a semi-truck, was booked into the Utah County Jail for attempting to burglarize a home Sunday morning, police said.

A surprised Orem man returned home early from church to find someone else's vehicle parked inside his garage. Suspecting someone might be inside his home, the man went next door to a neighbor's house to call the police. While the man spoke to the police on the phone, his neighbor spotted someone climbing over the man's backyard fence. Police arrived and identified Thacker running from the area with cash, prescription medications and two Ipods he'd taken from the victim's home.

Thacker told officers he'd found a garage door opener lying on the ground earlier that morning. He returned around 10 a.m. in his mother's Ford Explorer and parked in the victim's garage after finding it empty. Thacker was still taking things from the home when the owner returned and unexpectedly blocked his getaway car in the garage, police reported in a news release.

Car Trouble

You've heard the one about the woman who locked herself inside her car with a dead battery and phoned for help to get out of the car, right? Well, it really happened in Orem Friday. The woman called police on her cell phone after her car battery died and efforts to unlock the doors to let herself out proved futile.

"Occasionally, a mother or father will accidentally lock their small child or children inside the car and urgent help is needed; however, we don't often get these kind of calls for assistance," Lt. Doug Edwards said in a news release. "I'm just glad she had a cell phone to call for help."

Police arrived and tried to assist the woman, but she couldn't understand the officers outside the vehicle. Using hand gestures, the woman instructed them to call her on her cell phone. After getting the woman on the phone, police instructed the woman how she could manually operate the lock mechanism on the inside door panel to free herself, police said.

"I'd hate to think that people could actually put themselves in jeopardy because they didn't remember or understand that car door locks will work manually," Edwards said.