Police apprehend street department theft suspect-twice

Nathan Pohl, 29 escaped police for a short while yesterday after being arrested for trespassing at the golf course mower shed in the early morning hours on Monday. Police found Pohl’s vehicle stuck in the parking lot near the shed during regular inspection just after midnight.

“We were just doing normal patrol,” Sidney police chief B.J. Wilkinson explained.

Pohl told police he’d gone into the shed in an attempt to find a tool to assist him in digging out his car. When preparing to tow the vehicle after Pohl was arrested for trespassing, police identified items inside the vehicle which seemed out of the ordinary. When law enforcement contacted golf course workers, they confirmed that some of the items in the vehicle were likely taken from the mower shed.

After Pohl was transported to the police station, the suspect escaped during brief moment of inattention on the part of law enforcement officers, Wilkinson said. Wilkinson believes Pohl must have studied the building and noticed a low traffic exit, which he used to his advantage.

“He bolted from the interrogation room and to that rarely used door,” Wilkinson said.

At that point on Monday it was very cold and Pohl was not wearing a coat or shoes. Police tracked his footprints to a local home, where the residents informed them that Pohl had left shortly after acquiring shoes and a coat.

Police located Pohl later that day when an employee at Points West Bank on Glover Road reported that a man she didn’t know was in the backseat of her car in the parking lot. Pohl had climbed into the trunk when the vehicle was parked near the residence where he obtained the coat and had ridden to the bank in the cargo space. He fell asleep for a time and crawled into the backseat upon waking up.

Police found Pohl in the car and arrested him again. On suspicion that Pohl was involved in other recent burglaries, police executed a search warrant on his current residence.

“We located items stolen in a recent residential burglary and also located items stolen in the street department burglary,” Wilkinson said.

Pohl invoked his Miranda rights and would not admit to involvement with any burglaries. It is clear to police that he was in possession of stolen property.

Pohl is the second suspect arrested in connection with the street department burglary. Wyatt Coleman, 26, was arrested in Greeley, Colo. in December in a vehicle reported stolen from Sidney shortly after the incident. Coleman will soon be extradited to Nebraska to face charges. He also invoked his miranda rights and refused to speak about any involvement in the street department burglary.

Items taken in the street department break-in were found in his possession.

In the break in at the city street department building on Dec. 9., a flatbed pickup truck was stolen. Other items taken from the building included hand and power tools, laptop computers and a portable welder. The stolen truck was found on the afternoon of Dec. 9 in a pasture north of town. It had been partially hidden with hay bales.