Rockland Police arrested two Portland men on Aug. 6 and charged them with the attempted burglary of a convenience store.
Michael Warner II, 31, and Timothy Dellentash, 42, both of Portland, have also been charged with committing two recent burglaries at Maritime Farms stores in Newcastle and Waldoboro.
Those three crimes may be connected to at least 25 other robberies from New Hampshire to Bangor over the last few months, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
Neither man has posted bail, and both are being held in Knox County jail.
Just after midnight on Aug. 6, a Rockland resident called police to report a suspicious vehicle parked on a side street. When police investigated, they discovered the vehicle was registered to Warner, who was out on probation for burglary at the time, said Rockland Detective Sergeant Christopher Young.
“It was the call from the neighbors that allowed us to arrest these two,” Young said. “Without that call they probably wouldn’t have been apprehended.”
Shortly after police staked out Warner’s vehicle, an alarm went off at a nearby Home Depot. Although that was a false alarm, the suspects were allegedly in the process of robbing a nearby Circle K on Camden Street, Young said.
“Our officers responding to the alarm appears to have caused them to flee the scene,” Young said. The pair returned to their car and began to drive away before being pulled over and arrested, Young said.
Both were charged with attempted burglary and possession of burglary tools, Young said.
After their arrest, police found a list of similar targets in Knox County, as well as a cache of burglar’s tools, Young said.
“These guys were definitely professionals,” Young said.
After their arrest in Rockland, Waldoboro Police and the LCSO also arrested the men and charged them with the two burglaries in Newcastle and Waldoboro.
The Newcastle burglary occurred on July 12. In that incident, the perpetrators were successful in stealing about $20,000 in cash and several cartons of cigarettes, Maritime Farms reported after the incident.
At the time of that incident, the LCSO said they believed the crime was connected to a spree of other robberies. The perpetrators in all of the incidents chose similar targets and used similar tools and methods, the LCSO said.
In each case, the outside telephone lines of a convenience store were severed, the alarm panel knocked out and the store’s safe broken into with power tools.
In Waldoboro, the perpetrators were chased away from a Maritime Farms before taking any money because of a quick police response, Waldoboro Police Chief Bill Labombarde said.
“We were there within two minutes,” Labombarde said.
Although the perpetrators were unsuccessful in the Waldoboro burglary, they eluded police capture at the time, Labombarde said.
The Waldoboro incident is still under investigation, Labombarde said.
