A series of car break-ins and thefts are targeting teachers in the area | News
LEE’S SUMMIT, MO (KCTV) – As if teachers had no trouble these days, a thief is targeting school parking lots in Missouri and traveling across the country to do it. Local law enforcement have identified three teachers as victims and would like to hear from any school employees who recently had their cars broken into and their wallets or purses stolen.
“It is deplorable,” said the Missouri State Highway Patrol Sergeant. Bill Lowe. “Teachers have been through a lot in the last two years, and for all who are hunkering down, it’s despicable.”
The incident happened when soldiers dragged a man on I-70 in Lafayette County around 1 p.m. Tuesday for a traffic violation. Lowe said the soldier discovered the driver had a felony warrant in Nebraska for “unlawful use of the vehicle,” and a subsequent search of the soldier’s vehicle raised suspicions.
“He saw a lot of receipts, a lot of gift cards. There was a wallet in the car that didn’t belong to him,” Lowe explained.
Gift cards with serial numbers can be traced from the credit card used to purchase them. Lowe said the first number they tracked were teachers who were hit by cars at the school. Those thefts occurred in Savannah, Missouri, Pleasant Hill, Missouri, and a city in Minnesota.
On Wednesday, MSHP posted about the crimes on Twitter. Within hours, they heard from a teacher in Excelsior Springs, another teacher at Lee’s Summit, and from the Iowa State Patrol, who said several teachers in that state had been shot.
Investigators have yet to determine whether the specific crimes they’ve heard about involve the same man, but they have reason to believe there are far more victims than the three crimes. which they have definitely contacted so far.
“There are 27 other gift cards in there, so with as many gift cards as there are, there must be other victims associated with him,” Lowe asserts.
Aloysius Schrom, 59, of Minnesota, is currently charged in Lafayette County, Missouri with each count of theft and misdemeanor. Online Minnesota court records show he was sentenced there in 2019 for fraudulent use of “financial transaction cards”. The Minnesota Department of Corrections website shows that he was monitored after release on December 27, 2021 will continue until March 25, 2023.
MSHP wants to hear from anyone who was recently hit by a car at school.
“We wanted to make sure we were diligently looking for every victim we could and connecting the tracks,” Lowe said.
You can contact the investigator by calling 816-622-0800 and asking for Cpl. Beau Ryan.
As more evidence is gathered, more charges may come from other counties and other states.
As for why schools are a target, Lowe says it seems like just a crime of chance: a large parking lot where everyone is inside at certain times of the day.
