A man suspected of breaking into a local business and separate storage unit is in jail following his arrest on multiple theft and burglary charges. 29-year-old Timothy Cleveland Griffith of Hurricane was arrested Monday and charged with four third-degree felony counts of theft and burglary of a dwelling and non-dwelling.
Hurricane Police Sgt. Stacey Gubler said an employee of a local business called police Monday morning as soon as he arrived at work and saw obvious signs of a break-in. “Windows were broken and electronic equipment was missing from the business,” said Gubler, adding the business had been broken into sometime Sunday night. Electronic equipment worth more than $5,000 including computers vital to the business was missing, he said.
Evidence gathered at the business led officers to Griffith’s nearby residence, where he was detained until a search warrant was obtained from a judge. A Washington County Drug Task Force detective also came in on his day off to help write and process the search warrant, Gubler added.
Some of the items police saw inside Griffith’s house while serving the search warrant made him a primary suspect in the burglary of a storage unit reported just hours later. The second victim was a retired general contractor who reported close to $5,000 in construction tools had been stolen.
“We had a lot of people involved in working these two crime scenes, which really cut down on our investigation time,” Gubler said. “We were happy to locate and recover most of the property from these two burglaries.”
Griffith was booked into the Washington County jail on $20,000 bail.
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