Police charged a Pittsburgh man and detained four juveniles in a pair of vape shop smash-and-burglaries — chasing their pickup out of the city and trapping them on a dead-end street in Mt. Oliver just an hour after authorities say the businesses were hit.
Pittsburgh police on Friday charged William Yarbrough, 21, of the city’s Hill District with two felony counts of burglary and eight misdemeanors including corruption of minors, criminal mischief and evading arrest.
He remained in jail without bail Tuesday.
There is no indication any of the juveniles — two boys and two girls — were charged. Police said they released three of them to their parents. An officer drove the fourth home.
The sequence of events started at 2:02 a.m. with a smashed convenience-store window.
A burglary alarm sent police to Forbes Convenience Store at 5880 Forbes Ave. in Squirrel Hill, according to a criminal complaint.
Police said “numerous burglaries” — often at vape shops — had been reported recently in the bureau’s Zone 4, which covers Oakland, Uptown and East End neighborhoods such as Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze and Regent Square.
Video from inside the store showed a man in a mask shatter the shop’s front window with a pair of bolt-cutters, the complaint said. Police said he then grabbed everything from the cash register while his accomplices, also masked, snatched boxes of vape cartridges.
The footage showed the group flee in a gray pickup, police said. A street camera spotted a truck matching that description pass through a nearby intersection minutes before the break-in.
While police were still working at the Squirrel Hill scene, a separate burglar alarm sent officers in neighboring Zone 5 to a Bloomfield vape shop, the complaint said.
Officers responding to Keystone Vapors at 4526 Liberty Ave. said “the front-door glass was shattered and the structure was cleared.” They did not elaborate.
Less than a mile away, near the Bloomfield intersection of Friendship and South Pacific avenues, an officer responding to a different call saw someone throw a cash register from the window of a “dark-colored truck,” the complaint said.
License plate readers helped police take the next step.
Police said a camera on South Side’s East Carson Street spotted a gray Toyota Tacoma with Pennsylvania plates at 3:08 a.m.
A Mt. Oliver police officer heard the vehicle’s description broadcast and then saw the Toyota driving on Brownsville Road. He switched on his emergency lights and siren to stop the driver, the complaint said.
Police said the truck sped away down McKinley Street, a mile-long residential road near St. Joseph’s Cemetery.
Officers eventually cornered the driver near the last house on Tarragonna Street, which dead-ends at the cemetery.
Two boys jumped from the Toyota and ran away, the complaint said. Police detained and later released two girls, who they did not name in court records.
Later that night, Pittsburgh police spotted a group walking on Saw Mill Run Road near Nobles Lane who they said matched descriptions of the burglars.
The officers said they stopped the group, which included Yarbrough. They detained two boys and read Yarbrough his Miranda rights.
The boys, who police did not name, were released to their parents, according to the complaint.
Yarbrough “originally told (police) he and his friends were at a party and that is why they ran from the police,” the complaint said.
An officer told Yarbrough video cameras showed him committing one of the burglaries — as well as “other burglaries where he is currently the main suspect,” the complaint said.
Then, the story changed.
Yarbrough admitted to starting the night in Wilkinsburg, driving around and robbing the shops, the complaint said.
Police said Yarbrough was wearing the same clothing seen earlier that night on one of the men in the convenience-store video.
A search of Yarbrough’s backpack yielded $363 in cash, an iPhone, THC gummies and vaping materials, the complaint said.
Police said they also found a smaller black “bookbag” inside the backpack.
Inside that book bag were “bits of glass” that, police said, appeared to match the glass shards at the Squirrel Hill convenience store.
Police took Yarbrough to the Allegheny County Jail and he was arraigned Friday night, court records show.
District Judge Matthew J. Brungo denied bail.
Yarbrough’s attorney was not listed Tuesday in online court records.