Public safety report: String of car break-ins target Waltham neighborhood

During the past week, police responded to 20 car break-ins as well as one stolen car as part of a spree targeting Waltham’s Highlands neighborhood.

Residents woke up on the morning of April 3 to discover that overnight their cars had been rummaged through or had items missing. One man on Bacon Street had his car stolen. He had left his keys in his Honda CRV. The vehicle hasn’t been recovered yet.

Police were able to identify an involved Land Rover and Hyundai vehicle using the city’s Flock Safety camera system. The Land Rover was discovered to be stolen out of Lynnfield and had crashed in Malden. Through this, police were able to identify a suspect. The Hyundai was stolen out of Woburn but hasn’t been recovered. Police have been able to identify suspects and are still investigating the incident.

According to Waltham Police Detective Sergeant Patrick Dean, this incident is similar to several others that have happened recently in the Greater Boston area. 

“Typically the way it works is a group of younger people find an unlocked car. Sometimes people leave their keys inside and they’re able to steal it. They take this stolen car, drive it to another town, find another unlocked car and either steal from it or steal the car itself,” explained Dean.

Dean offered the following tips to protect against being a target of a similar scheme:

• Lock car doors and do not leave keys in a car.
• Fold car mirrors in. Many cars with keyless fobs have mirrors that fold in automatically when the car locks. If mirrors are out, someone is more likely to try to break in because it may mean the car isn’t locked.
• Use a radio frequency protection system for keyless fobs. While it wasn’t present in the Waltham incidents, sometimes suspects have specially-built amplifiers that can boost the signal from a fob so that the car can be started without the fob being nearby. RF protection sleeves can be bought online. Residents can also place their fob in a box covered in aluminum foil to get the same result.

A summary of police activity from April 1 to April 6 is as follows:

On April 1 at 7:13 a.m., police responded to the intersection of Hardy Pond Road and Silver Hill Lane. A construction crew had left a machine there overnight and when they came back the following morning, the tires were slashed. Police responded to a similar incident on Winter Street at 7:25 a.m., where a different construction company’s machine had its tires slashed. It is unclear whether the two incidents are connected.

On April 2 at 10:29 p.m., police responded to a residence on Hammond Street. A woman had clicked on a pop-up ad on her computer that directed her to a website telling her she had a security breach. The website informed her that a “Chinese website” hacked her and put child sexual assault material on her computer. If the woman paid $30,000, the website promised to fix it. The woman almost went through with the payment, but recognized it was a scam and called the police.

On April 3 at 10:12 p.m., police responded to the Bristol Lodge at 27 Lexington Street. Two residents of Bristol Lodge got into an argument, and one of the men ended up kicking the other. Police arrested the man, identified as Jose Burgos-Dominguez, 26, homeless, of Waltham. Burgos-Dominguez tried to pull away from police after being placed under arrest and kicked the side of the police vehicle while officers were attempting to put him in the back of the car for transport. 

Burgos-Dominguez is being charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, resisting arrest and malicious damage to a motor vehicle. In this case, the dangerous weapon is categorized under Massachusetts law as a ‘shod foot,’ meaning that the suspect injured the other resident with his foot while wearing shoes.

No notable police activity took place from April 4 to April 6.

All information was obtained from spokespeople with the Waltham Police and Fire departments,the publicly available police blotterand police reports available at Waltham District Court.