AUGUSTA — A city woman arrested and charged in a Windsor burglary Friday told police she was involved in a theft from the site of quadruple-amputee veteran Travis Mills’ under-construction home in Manchester, according to a court document.
Tiffany Fitzpatrick, 26, of Augusta, was charged with two counts of burglary and one count of theft by unauthorized taking after a Maine State Police trooper said in a court document that she admitted to taking part in the two burglaries overnight Wednesday.
However, those charges were related to the Windsor theft. As of Monday, she hadn’t been charged in connection with the Manchester theft. She made an initial video appearance in Kennebec County Superior Court Monday afternoon.
In Trooper Elisha Fowlie’s affidavit, Fitzpatrick says she and a 36-year-old Sidney man drove around the area in a friend’s car that night, targeting two construction sites on Pond Road in Manchester and on Ridge Road in Windsor. At both sites, tools were reported stolen early Thursday.
Fitzpatrick told Fowlie that she and the man stole tools at the Manchester site, including a new generator. After that, she said the two went to the Windsor site. As she acted as a lookout, she said the man stole the air compressor, which she helped him load into the car.
Chief Deputy Ryan Reardon of the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office said the man hasn’t been charged and is “someone that we need to talk to in reference to this investigation.”
Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said she expects charges against Fitzpatrick in the Manchester theft and the man in both thefts to come within days, after her office gets more information from the sheriff’s office, which is investigating the Mills theft.
Stolen items from the two sites showed up in pawn shops, according to Fowlie, who was investigating the Windsor burglary when he learned that items missing from Manchester were also being pawned. Five more people were summoned for that.
A compressor and saw went to the Augusta Pawn Shop, where Ashlie Whitmore, 26, and Eric Fitzpatrick, 28, both of Augusta, were on record bringing the items to the pawn shop. They were each summoned on a charge of possession of stolen property, Fowlie wrote.
More items went to A&E Pawn, also in the city. Three others, Benajmin Rideout, 22, of Chelsea, Zachary Emery, 25, of Randolph, and Niffy York, 24, of Chelsea, admitted taking items there and were summoned on the same charge, a class C felony, according to Fowlie.
The sheriff’s office originally estimated the value of the tools at between $10,000 and $15,000, but Reardon said Monday the estimated value was $8,000. The compressor stolen from the Windsor site was valued at $800, Fowlie wrote.
The generator was one of the items reported stolen from the Pond Road site, where two foundations are building a state-of-the-art “smart home” for Mills, the 27-year-old veteran, his wife and young daughter. He said Friday that he was angry about the theft and would “make sure I’m at the arraignment so they can see who they stole from.”
The retired Army staff sergeant, one of only five quadruple amputees from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, was wounded by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012. He has said his family, living in Texas now, expects to move into the home as early as June.
On Friday, the head contractor on the site said the theft only delayed construction about three hours, since tools were recovered from an Augusta pawn shop and Hammond Lumber Company donated other tools, including nail guns, necessary to continue work.
Michael Shepherd — 370-7652 mshepherd@centralmaine.com Twitter: @mikeshepherdme@mikeshepherdme
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