Man faces charges in Springfield burglary

Man faces charges in Springfield burglary

By ERIC FRANCIS
CORRESPONDENT
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Police say a burglar who tried to crawl through a man’s bedroom window in Springfield was chased down and captured moments later by officers.

Adam Currier, 21, of Springfield pleaded innocent Monday to felony counts of burglary and attempted burglary and to an accompanying misdemeanor count of petty larceny before he was released on pre-trial conditions.

Springfield police were called out at 1 a.m. Monday after a couple on Hillcrest Road were awakened by the sound of glass breaking on the ground floor of their residence. Homeowner Russell Moore later told police that he ran downstairs and turned on the stairway light just in time to see a young man dash out his door. As the burglar took off down the snowy road on foot, Moore circled his house and discovered that his front door had been broken, a screen had been ripped off a porch window, and the side door to his garage had been pushed open. Moore said both of his cars had been gone through, a GPS unit and set of wrenches had been taken, and the rest of the contents of the glove boxes had been strewn around the front seats and the garage floor.

Minutes after Springfield Police Cpl. Chris Norton and a pair of state troopers arrived and began following the footprints on Ellis Street, they received calls reporting that someone had just been seen going through a car on nearby Mary Street and that the suspect was now attempting to break into another home on Ellis Street.

Norton said as he drove up to Ellis Street he was flagged down by Wesley Black, a Springfield firefighter returning to his own home from a fire call, who pointed out Currier on a nearby street corner. Norton said that as soon as Currier saw his cruiser, he took off running across the lawn of one of the homes. Norton said he chased Currier, pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him near the back yard fence. A quick pat-down of Currier came up with the GPS unit that had gone missing from the Hillcrest Road home, Norton wrote in an affidavit filed with the court.

While Norton and the troopers were taking Currier into custody, Matthew Durham walked up to the officers and told them that he had just surprised Currier moments beforehand, as Currier was crawling through a bedroom window on Ellis Street while Durham’s elderly father was sleeping just a few feet away. Durham explained that he’d been visiting his parents at their Ellis Street residence and had been on the couch watching late-night television, when he heard what sounded like someone moving the front door knob. He got up and looked but didn’t see anyone; however, his mother came in and said she’d heard what sounded to her like an animal brushing up against the house. “Then I heard something moving outside my father’s room,” Durham later recalled in a statement to police, “When I turned on the light I saw a young man’s head sticking in the window. He left and I called 911 (then) I went outside and I saw the police already had (Currier) handcuffed. This was definitely the same person I saw with his head in my father’s window.”

Currier was charged with a felony burglary back in 2011 related to a break-in and theft in Weathersfield. Following that incident, Currier successfully completed the court’s “Sparrow Program” counseling and struck a plea deal in which the felony was amended to a charge of misdemeanor petty larceny. He received a three-to-six month sentence which was suspended so that he could “continue to engage in vocational training,” according to court records.

Currier faces a maximum potential penalty of up to 26 years in prison if convicted of all the new charges now pending against him.

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