A yearlong investigation into a burglary at a Robeson Township convenience store led to charges against a Reading man after DNA evidence linked him to the scene,police said.<\/p>\n
The break-in occurred in the early morning hours of Oct. 10, 2023, at the Turkey Hill Minit Market, 3248 Morgantown Road.<\/p>\n
Mercado-Ortiz, 49, was charged early this year with burglary, theft by unlawful taking and possessing an instrument of crime after investigators said his DNA matched the DNA profile of a spot of blood found on and around a crowbar the intruders left at the scene.<\/p>\n
He was arraigned Friday night before District Judge Gail M. Greth in Reading Central Court and returned to Berks County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail to await a hearing.<\/p>\n
According to court records:<\/p>\n
Robeson police responded to a burglar alarm and arrived to find the glass on one of the front doors shattered. A trail of cigarette packs led from behind the counter into the parking lot. Leaning against the broken tobacco case was a crowbar with what appeared to be blood on it. Officer Jakob Ketterer collected a swab of the blood and submitted it for DNA analysis.<\/p>\n
Security video from that night showed an SUV pulling into the lot about 3:26 a.m. Two men got out. The passenger, wearing a gray beanie, used a yellow crowbar \u2014 similar to the one found at the scene \u2014 to smash the front door.<\/p>\n
Both burglars went behind the counter, each removing a rack of Newport cigarettes before fleeing through the same door, dropping several packs as they ran. The SUV then entered Interstate 176 northbound.<\/p>\n
Store officials told police the thieves took cigarettes valued at $1,289.<\/p>\n
Police sent the blood evidence to the state police crime lab in Bethlehem and released still images of the suspects through Crime Alert Berks County, but no leads developed.<\/p>\n
A year later, in October 2024, police were notified that the lab had found a presumptive DNA match through CODIS, a national database operated by the FBI. The hit identified Uladamit Mercado-Ortiz, then 48, though his whereabouts were unknown.<\/p>\n
This year investigators learned Mercado-Ortiz was being held in Berks County Jail on unrelated charges. Ketterer obtained a warrant to collect a DNA sample from him, which was sent to the lab for confirmation. The analysis confirmed a match to the blood found at the scene.<\/p>\n
Police said the second suspect remains unidentified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A yearlong investigation into a burglary at a Robeson Township convenience store led to charges against a Reading…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,182,139,28,128,130,129,12748,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-17973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-reading-city","14":"tag-reading-city-headlines","15":"tag-reading-city-news","16":"tag-robeson-township","17":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17973","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=17973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}