A Chicago man was arrested Sunday on a charge of burglary after Chesterton Police said he was interrupted in the act of burglarizing a residence in the 900 block of South 19th Street.

Charged with burglary was Dennis James Draper III, 20. Burglary is a Class B felony punishable by a term of six to 20 years.

According to police, at 3:40 p.m. officers made contact with a homeowner who advised that he had walked into his house to discover a male subject, dressed in dark clothing, attempting to steal his 50-inch flat-screen Hitachi television. Startled, the subject ran through the kitchen in the direction of the back door but the homeowner was able to intercept him before he reached it. The homeowner punched the subject once in the ribs, some pushing on both sides ensued, and then the subject managed to flee down the driveway between the homeowner’s house and the adjacent one and jump over a fence.

The homeowner described the subject as a black male wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and dark trousers.

In an immediate canvas of the neighborhood, police said, a witness who lives across the street reported seeing a black male wearing a black shirt and dark jeans with distinctive graphics on the back run around a privacy fence surrounding the neighboring yard. The witness was unable to identify the subject but did say that earlier in the day he had seen the subject leaving the residence at 917 S. 19th St. on a bicycle and a short time later returning to that residence.

Two other witnesses also reported seeing a black male run from behind their home, through their front yard, and to the front of the residence at 917 S. 19th St. “She stated that they became alarmed because he was out of breath and seemed very nervous, so the two went inside their home and locked the doors,” police said. The witness “recalled that the male was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans with bright graphics on the back.”

Officers then made several attempts to make contact with anyone inside the residence at 917 S. 19th St. but without success. A perimeter was established around the residence and officers were in the process of obtaining a warrant to search it when a resident arrived at the scene, police said. The resident advised that her friend Dennis Draper should be inside her home and then succeeded in reaching him on the phone. “She handed the phone to me and I spoke to him,” an officer stated in his report. “He sounded frantic and insisted he had done nothing wrong. When I asked him to come outside and merely speak with us, he stated that he could not because he is on probation. He then tried to insist that he was not even in Chesterton.”

The resident subsequently permitted officers and a K-9 unit attached to the Porter County Sheriff’s Police to enter her home, police said, and in a search of the residence Draper was located in the attic.

Officers also located a pair of dark jeans with a “very large, colorful patch that covered the entire backside” later identified by a witness as the trousers worn by the black male seen running through her yard,” police said. In addition, officers located a black hooded sweatshirt on the living room floor and a crack pipe on a bathroom sink, police said.

Draper “stated that he hid in the attic because he was afraid of being charged with the crack in the house,” police said. Draper was transported to Porter County Jail.

Posted 10/5/2009