Two men stole keys from a 72-year-old woman inside a St. Paul Walmart last week and took off in her vehicle, according to criminal charges.
It didn’t stop there. The two drove the stolen vehicle to her apartment, and were rummaging around inside when a St. Paul police officer who escorted the woman home opened the door to her unit, according to St. Paul police officer Tom Reis.
Startled, one of the men jumped out the third-floor apartment’s window and landed on concrete below before taking off on foot. The second, Joseph Smith, 30, was found hiding in the woman’s bathroom and was arrested, Reis said.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged Smith with second-degree burglary and two counts of theft, according to the criminal complaint filed against him.
The second individual hasn’t been located.
Reis was working security at Walmart last Thursday when he said he saw a “visibly shaken” woman with a walker talking to the store manager.
The woman had gone to refill a drink at the Subway inside the store on University Avenue when two men swiped her keys from atop her walker and left the store, the complaint said.
They quickly found her Chevrolet Equinox in the parking lot and took off.
The woman asked Reis whether she should be concerned that they might try to use her keys to also gain access to her apartment, Reis assured her at the time that was unlikely, he recalled Monday.
“Obviously these (didn’t end up being) your typical auto thieves,” Reis said, adding that most vehicle thieves make off with a vehicle and leave it at that.
It was a stroke of good fortune that Reis arranged for an officer to drive the woman home, he said.
“Luckily they decided not to just drop her off and let her go up the apartment because they weren’t expecting what happened to happen,” he said.
Officers found a backpack with a box of the woman’s coins inside. A black cellphone and a red shirt were located in her vehicle.
The woman told Reis that she suspected mail she left in her vehicle along with her insurance card likely tipped the men off to her address.
When interviewed, Smith told police that he met up with two guys who offered to pay him $20 to help out at the apartment, charges say.
Smith’s past convictions include theft by swindle, domestic assault by strangulation and third-degree burglary.
He now faces additional charges of second-degree burglary and two counts of theft.
No attorney was listed for Smith in court records.