Mayfair Burglars Bungle Escape After Scooping Up Unprotected Cash

Wauwatosa police caught a couple of solid breaks and turned them both into crimefighting gold when a pair of burglars pulled off a stunningly successful heist in the middle of Mayfair Mall – then lost their nerve at the first sight of a cop, who, as it turned out, wasn't even looking for them.

Both ended up in jail.

According to police:

An inside-job burglary hadn't even been detected yet when a patrol officer was called to Mayfair at 10:45 p.m. Friday on a report of a fight at the restaurant there.

The officer approached from the east on West North Avenue, so he turned in to the mall entrance at North 105th Street and planned to circle around the north end of the mall to the restaurant.

As he was rounding the turn at the , he saw two people walking across the middle of the parking lot. They saw him, too – and the sight sent them bolting madly in opposite directions.

The officer elected to chase the southbound runner, blocking him off with his squad car – which might have saved the man from plunging over a railing above a 20-foot-high retaining wall. The suspect dodged left and the officer jumped out of his car and pursued on foot.

The man scrambled up an embankment and ran through the covered parking area under the . The officer followed close behind.

Following the money

As the suspect continued to hotfoot it south through the parking lot, he began to jettison large amounts of cash and other paper, tossing the scrip into the air behind him.

Trailing money, he led the officer on a foot chase all the way to the south end of the mall parking lot, through the drive-through, across West North Avenue and into residential yards beyond.

The suspect continued to unburden himself of money and documents as he climbed two fences with the patrol officer only 10 to 12 feet behind him.

Finally, in the third yard he entered, in the 10500 block of West North Avenue, he was captured. Other officers arrived to secure him while the first officer retraced the chase route and recovered evidence along the way.

The paper trail

He found that besides money – a lot of it – there were money envelopes, deposit slips and two paper hats, all from sandwich shop.

Entering the mall, he contacted security and made his way to the food court. With a Mayfair security officer, he pondered the situation. The mall was closed, the food court closed, but there was nothing to stop anyone from climbing over the counter into the Subway restaurant.

The security officer told him that in fact, she had just done so herself after police called her, to investigate on her own.

So the officer followed suit, hoisting himself over the counter and into the front area of the restaurant. Behind the counter, he found a safe with two compartments. The upper compartment was closed but not locked, and it was also empty.

Soon, a janitor approached the scene to report that he had seen a couple of people climbing across the counter, and he had thought it didn't seem right, but he wasn't sure because he had often seen employees of food court stores entering and leaving the same way.

Mall video footage showed the man and a female accomplice roaming in the hallway behind the food court restaurants during the burglary.

A case of mistaken identity

Back at the police station, officers were interviewing their captive, who turned out to be an 18-year-old Milwaukee man, in a holding cell, when other officers brought in several women involved in the intial fight at Applebee's.

The women were talking loudly and within earshot, and the burglary suspect overheard what he apparently thought was a familiar voice.

"Is she going home tonight?" he asked.

When an officer asked him what he meant by that, he replied, “Oh, never mind.”

Realizing that the man thought his accomplice – his girlfriend, it turned out – had also been taken into custody, Tosa police fooled him into giving them her name. She was located and arrested later in the weekend.

Both made complete confessions to the burglary, and their case will be presented for charging on Thursday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, police said.

The 21-year-old Milwaukee woman confessed that she was a former Subway employee and knew that the safe was broken and could not be locked, they said.

Subway corporate relations could not immediately be reached Monday.

Mayfair general manager Steve Smith said that he was aware of the incident, but had not yet seen police reports and was awaiting an internal report on the matter.

Wauwatosa police have requested that Patch not reveal the amounts of money taken during such crimes, to discourage criminals from thinking that particular businesses or types of businesses are easy marks.

In this case, the amount of cash left undeposited and unsecured was far more than any sandwich shop should need to have on hand to conduct business in the morning.