Tracking Device Targets Crew Behind North Shore Home Burglaries: Cops

GLENCOE, IL — Investigators used a GPS tracking device to follow a suspected burglary crew from Chicago to the scene of break-in last month at a home in Glencoe, authorities said.

Dominick Wasso, 19, of Oak Lawn, was arrested last week and charged with residential burglary and possession of burglary tools in connection with a Jan. 17 incident, records show.

Wasso was the passenger in a 2010 Ford Escape on which investigators with the North Regional Major Crimes Task Force, or NORTAF, placed the court-approved tracking device, according to prosecutors.

Detectives begun tracked the car in the 3800 block of South Rockwell Street in Chicago to Glencoe, Assistant State's Attorney Paige Reinhaur said Thursday at his initial court appearance in Skokie.

"NORTAF investigators conducted covert and physical surveillance on the vehicle," Reinhaur said. "[Wasso] was captured on video at a gas station getting out of the vehicle two hours before the crime."

The SUV circles around Glencoe for about an hour before stopping outside a home in the 500 block of Washington Street, where it remained for about 12 minutes, Reinhaur said. After it left, Glencoe police found that someone had broken in through multiple entrances and ransacked the interior.

NORTAF continued to track the SUV to the Irving Park neighborhood where officers from multiple departments attempted to pull it over. But the driver fled police, striking an unmarked Glencoe Department of Public Safety squad car, according to the prosecutor.

The tracking device led investigators to the 3100 block of South Canal, where the SUV was found abandoned with two pry bars, two pellet guns, a mallet and more than a dozen pieces of jewelry identified as having been stolen from the Glencoe home, Reinhaur said.

Surveillance video showed Wasso and the other occupants of the SUV get out and enter a pickup truck, which investigators recognized as also being used by the burglary crew.

The pickup was owned by a relative of Wasso, and after towing and searching it, the prosecutors said, police found paperwork in one of the names he is known to use.

"[Police] refer to the crew involved in this with a certain name, and they're investigating them with a string of burglaries," Reinhaur said.

At the time of the incident, Wasso was out on bond while awaiting trial in DuPage County on similar charges.

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Following an arrest by Willowbrook police, prosecutors in June 2022 charged Wasso with residential burglary, aggravated fleeing and eluding police and misdemeanor criminal damage. He is due back in court in that case on March 23, records show.

Cook County Associate Judge Anthony Calabrese ordered Wasso jailed unless he can come up with the $25,000 cash portion of his bond on the new charges.

Calabrese said he would have considered setting a more affordable bond, "but for the fact he has what seems to be an identical pending case currently out of DuPage."

Wasso is due back in court Thursday for bond review.