{"id":158699,"date":"2026-04-06T18:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T18:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/158699\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T18:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T18:22:10","slug":"custodian-broke-into-carnegie-mellon-students-rooms-and-stole-wallets-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/158699\/","title":{"rendered":"Custodian broke into Carnegie Mellon students&#8217; rooms and stole wallets, police say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A custodian at Carnegie Mellon University is charged with breaking into students&#8217; dorm rooms and stealing their wallets.<\/p>\n<p>According to court paperwork, 29-year-old Blaney Rhode is facing several charges, including burglary, theft by unlawful taking and access device fraud after a string of break-ins at the school.<\/p>\n<p>From March 24 to March 31, police said Rhode, a temporary custodian working with a third-party vendor contracted by Carnegie Mellon University, went into students&#8217; rooms and stole things like wallets, a watch and cash.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Police said Rhode used stolen credit cards to make fraudulent purchases at businesses like dispensaries and smoke shops, Dollar Tree and Burger King.<\/p>\n<p>Investigators said they obtained surveillance footage showing Rhode at a dispensary where a stolen card was used, and a stolen wallet with an Apple AirTag was tracked back to his home. Police said card access records also linked Rhode to the burglaries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Rhode was arrested after the Carnegie Mellon University Police Department put out a &#8220;be on the lookout&#8221; alert for him. He was taken into custody, and investigators said Rhode admitted to the burglaries, saying he was &#8220;struggling financially.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Court paperwork shows that Rhode has a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 20 at 10 a.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A custodian at Carnegie Mellon University is charged with breaking into students&#8217; dorm rooms and stealing their wallets.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[44187,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-158699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-carnegie-mellon","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}