Men Charged with Burglarizing Cars, Garages in Rosemount, Apple Valley

Two Dakota County men have been charged with burglarizing cars and garages in Apple Valley and Rosemount last week and using victims’ credit cards around the area.

Alexander Jeffrey Gould, 21, of Apple Valley, and John Daniel Comes, 19, of Farmington are facing two felony counts of third-degree burglary and one felony count of credit-card fraud, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The two also are charged with theft from a vehicle of property valued at $500 to $1,000, a gross misdeameanor, and two misdemeanor counts of theft from a vehicle of property valued at less than $500.

According to the criminal complaints, Rosemount police were alerted to a series of vehicle and garage break-ins throughout the city early on the morning of July 13.

As officers began taking reports from victims in an effort to track down the culprits, they started to find discarded property belonging to the victims in a pattern that indicated in which direction the suspects were traveling.

Police tracked down a car with what appeared to be four teenage males inside and made a traffic stop. The driver was Comes, and the front-seat passenger was Gould; the two back-seat passengers were juveniles, according to the complaint.

Police spotted what appeared to be guns in the car, and asked the four people inside to step out so they could determine whether they were real. While they collected the guns, officers found items that they believed were stolen, including a number of GPS units, iPods and a bag containing several cans of beer, the complaint says.

An officer searching Gould found cash sticking out of the waistband of his pants near his navel, according to the complaint.

As the officer continued to search Gould, credit cards, cash and gift cards began to fall out of the bottom of Gould’s pants, according to the complaint; the officer asked what other items he had in his pants, and Gould said he had stuffed things into his pants while the car was being pulled over.

Police also found a camera and a wallet with no identification inside the car. One of the iPods had been reported stolen that night by a resident who said someone had gone through his car while it was parked in his driveway, the complaint says.

A Rosemount police officer on patrol noticed a garage door open about 2:35 a.m. and saw receipts lying on the edge of the road the driveway. He woke up the homeowner and asked her if she had closed her garage door before going to bed; she checked her car and reported that her purse had been stolen. One of her credit cards was in Gould’s possession, according to the complaint.

Another victim, who told police that he had gone to high school with Gould, reported that his stolen credit card had been used at a number of locations in the Rosemount area that night for unauthorized purchases totaling almost $400.

Police learned later that a number of garages and cars in Apple Valley were burglarized the same night. They recovered credit cards, debit cards, gift cards and a GPS unit from two of the Apple Valley burglaries in the car driven by Comes, according to the complaint.

Comes is free on a $10,000 bond and has an omnibus hearing scheduled for Aug. 1. Gould, whose criminal history includes convictions for burglary, theft and credit-card fraud, is free on a $30,000 bond, and his omnibus hearing is scheduled for Oct. 24.