Cops, using GPS, find theft suspect

By Nick Cenegy / The Daily News

LEAGUE CITY, Texas — League City police are pretty certain they know the man responsible for several car burglaries outside area day cares during the last month. They’re confident because they know exactly where the man has been.

It was, in part, good police work. An off-duty officer called in a suspicious green van hanging around his child’s day care weeks ago.

It was, in part, the work of investigators who doggedly ran down leads in nine car burglary cases, eventually turning up surveillance footage from one of the day cares.

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But the break that brought the case together was that David Lee Routt, 38, the man who has been charged with the crimes, was wearing a GPS ankle bracelet tracking his whereabouts pending a parole revocation hearing.

Investigators allege that, on at least nine occasions in the past month, Routt waited outside day care centers between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. as parents walked their children inside.

The residents would leave their purses or wallets inside their cars, which often were left unlocked or running, and return minutes later to find them gone, Sgt. John Jordan said.

The profile of each case was nearly identical. Nothing except the purses ever was stolen, Jordan said.

Immediately after the theft, before the victim had the chance to report anything missing, the credit cards would be used at nearby gas stations. The person using the cards wouldn’t risk going inside the store, so there was no surveillance footage that might reveal his face.

Week after week went by with no leads. Police put together an operations plan to step up their efforts. The thefts were happening daily, Jordan said.

Jordan said surveillance video from a day care showed a green van pulling up next to a car that had been reported burglarized and a man getting out.

After running the van’s description through police records, they found a suspicious vehicle report logged weeks before by an off-duty patrolman.

Jordan said investigators used license plate information to find the van’s owner. The owner told authorities she had given the van to a family member who was back in jail.

Police found Routt in Harris County Jail and contacted his parole officer. The parole officer told them about the GPS anklet and arranged to check on Routt’s whereabouts during the burglaries.

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