Police Reports: A Bridge Too Low, or, 'I Knew It When I Hit It'

More than one Wauwatosa Patch reader wrote to ask what all the excitement was about on Wednesday afternoon when, they said, they saw police cars and fire trucks rushing about madly around Swan Boulevard and West North Avenue and blocking off Swan to the south.

There is an M&I Bank branch at the corner – had it been robbed?

Hardly.

At 2 p.m., a patrol officer spotted a truck that had hit the railroad bridge over Swan, just beyond the entrance to Tosa Pool.

[UPDATE: The police report on this incident clearly stated it was a semi-tractor truck; however, the attached picture snapped by reader April Tillman Cavanaugh just as clearly shows it was in fact a large rental box truck. Patch hopes the driver bought the full insurance.]

The driver told the officer that he had dropped off his load and was looking for something to eat.

He said he was following his GPS and not paying attention to road signs, so he did not see the one that says the bridge has only 12 feet of clearance – not enough for his truck.

He added – perhaps unnecessarily – that he realized the bridge was too low when he hit it.

Police called the Canadian Pacific Railroad to inspect the bridge for safety and issued the driver a citation for failure to obey a sign.

With Menomonee River Parkway closed for sewer construction east of Swan, the boulevard had to be closed all the way to North Avenue for some time to keep traffic from getting bottled up with no outlet in the area.

In other recent incidents:

Thursday

A resident of the 1900 block of Church Street reported that overnight someone entered his unlocked garage and stole two bicycles. He said that the bikes had been locked to a wooden lawn chair, which had been broken up to get the bikes away.

At 1 a.m., police arrested a 15-year-old Wauwatosa boy for driving without a license and violating curfew after he took his mother’s car while she was asleep and used it to pay a visit to a 14-year-old girl. At 12:09 a.m., police had been called to the area of North 116^th Street and Diane Drive on an anonymous report of a possible stolen vehicle by a known person who was a student at Wauwatosa West High School. The caller also said that the driver had been seen leaving the car and heading into the woods behind apartment buildings in the 11600 block of Diane. After police arrived, they found the boy standing outside a door at one of the buildings. He initially said he had been driven there by a friend, but his mother, when contacted, said otherwise. Her son had taken her car without her knowledge or permission, she said, but she declined to pursue charges of auto theft. The girl, home alone at the apartment, told officers that the boy had arrived uninvited and that she had not let him come inside. The boy was also found to be on probation, although the police report did not say for what. Officers informed him that they would be contacting his probation agent in the morning to report the possible violation.

Wednesday

A Milwaukee woman reported that while she was at work at , 3201 N. Mayfair Rd., someone tried to punch out the lock on the driver’s door of her car in an apparent attempt to break in. Police found a hole punched in the lock, which had been pulled out of the door a half an inch. The door remained locked but inoperable, and nothing was taken.

A resident of the 2500 block of Swan Boulevard reported that overnight someone entered her unlocked minivan in her driveway and stole cash left inside it.

A resident of the 4700 block of North 103^rd Street reported that overnight someone entered her detached garage and stole two bicycles. She did not know for sure whether the side door had been locked, but said it would have been easy to open in any case. Police found no signs of force.

A resident of the 9200 block of Wilson Boulevard reported that overnight someone entered his and his wife’s cars, both of which were unlocked, and stole a GPS unit from his and her wallet from hers, containing cash, her driver’s license, credit cards and Social Security card.

Tuesday

A resident of the 3000 block of North 121^st Street reported that a bicycle had been taken from her garage some time since the previous day. She said the garage had been locked for the night, so she thought the bike must have been taken just after 6 p.m. Monday while the garage was still open and her husband was walking their dog.

Monday

A 21-year-old Wauwatosa man called police to say that he believed that some time since Saturday, someone had stolen his Smith & Wesson .40-cal. pistol and magazines from his backpack, which he had left in the back seat of his parents’ car overnight, locked, but with the back windows inadvertently rolled down. He had bought the handgun, his first, only in May. He said he had left it in the car for a couple of days after a visit to a shooting range. The subject of his ongoing battle with street narcotic drug addiction also came up during his interview with police.

A resident of the 9600 block of West Hope Avenue reported the theft of two bicycles from his open garage some time between 2 and 4:15 p.m. He said he was home at the time but saw and heard nothing. The two bikes were recovered and returned later Monday, but police reports did not say where they were found or by whom.

A resident of the 9500 block of Ruby Avenue reported that a neighbor had just told her that she had seen two boys enter her garage and take two bicycles. That neighbor, and another who had also seen the boys, described one of them as black, 10 to 12 years old, 5-feet 1-inch tall, with a thin build and a dark complexion, and the other as also black and about 14 or 15 years old. They could give no more complete description of the second suspect. One of the bikes was later recovered and returned.

A Waukesha woman staying at the , 11811 Blue Mound Road, for a wedding learned that her car had been entered and her laptop computer stolen when police returned it to her after it was turned in to them as found property. The woman said she was sure her car had been locked but there was no sign of force.

At 2:31 p.m., a 40-year-old Milwaukee woman was arrested for the second time in five days for stealing the same products from the same store. She was caught again at , 3900 N. 124^th St., trying to make off with four jars of “Miss Jessie’s Curly Butter Cream,” a hair product that sells for $58 a jar.

A dentist who works at , 10863 Blue Mound Rd., reported that when he arrived at work in the morning he was told by another employee that the outer screen on his office window had been damaged over the weekend. He found the screen torn and two large and distinct handprints on the window itself. Detectives were able to lift identifiable prints from both, and are awaiting a State Crime Lab data search for the owner. Police noted that there had been two reports of vandalism nearby that were witnessed or filmed occurring at around 2:20 and at 2:27 a.m. Saturday, and that there had been seven reports of car entries in the area as well.

A resident of the 1500 block of North 123^rd Street reported that between 2:30 and 6 a.m. someone had entered his unlocked car and stolen his laptop computer and its case. He said that he does not usually leave personal items in the car, but he just happened to have done so that night, trusting to his heavily tinted windows. His daughter found all four doors wide open in the morning. Detectives found multiple finger and palm prints on all four doors and were able to lift a several that may be identifiable.

At 12:56 a.m., police arrested four subjects, three for underage drinking and the fourth, a 25-year-old St. Francis man, for contributing to the delinquency of the others, including a 16-year-old girl. They were all found in , where they were consuming a potent mixture of raspberry vodka and Hawaiian Punch.