MONROE — A man suspected of stealing from construction sites in Snohomish and King counties was arrested Monday in Monroe.
Police booked the man, a 41-year-old Duvall resident, into the Snohomish County Jail after serving a search warrant on his motel room in Monroe. As of Tuesday night, police also had served warrants on three storage units they believe the man rented to store stolen goods.
A Snohomish County District Court judge on Tuesday afternoon released the man on his own recognizance.
The case remains under investigation by the Sky Valley Enforcement Team, a special investigative unit made up of officers from Monroe and the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.
Officers visited the man on Monday at his motel room along U.S. 2, according to a police affidavit. Inside, they allegedly found tools reported stolen from a burglary at an Everett elementary school construction site.
Police also found a receipt for the rental of several storage units, about 20 spools of wire and a backpack that reportedly contained stolen mail and stolen credit cards. Police also recovered five driver’s licenses.
At the storage units, police found large amounts of wire, and several more items reported stolen from the Everett school, court papers show.
Some of the recovered wire had been stripped, a sign that it was being prepared to be sold for scrap metal, Monroe police spokeswoman Debbie Willis said.
Investigators have contacted police in Everett, Snohomish and Bellevue about the case, Willis said. They plan to review theft reports to check for matches to the stolen goods. They also plan to talk to people they believe the man may have targeted for identity theft.
“Sometimes you get new information, and so we don’t believe this is over, and we want to make sure we’ve recovered as much as we can to try to get this back to the owners,” Willis said.
Anyone who has been a victim of a construction site burglary over the past few months in Snohomish or King counties is asked to call Monroe police at 360-794-6300.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com
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