Couple connected to multiple burglaries

PALMDALE – A 35-year-old woman and her 20-year-old boyfriend were taken into custody Tuesday morning (Feb. 19) for committing a string of home burglaries in east Palmdale, authorities said.

Charron Fiesta Payne and Cedric Pillear were arrested around 8 a.m. Tuesday for residential burglary, petty theft and receiving stolen property.  The arrests came after deputies served a search warrant at the couple’s home in the 37800 Block of 58^th Street East in Palmdale.

The search turned up stolen items that connected the couple to multiple home burglaries in their neighborhood tracing back to October 2012, according to Palmdale Sheriff’s Station Lt. Cory Kennedy.

“We have five confirmed crimes that we can directly link them to, but we’re looking at a total of 24,” Kennedy said.

The ongoing investigation began late last month, after a burglary victim spotted someone carrying a Nike athletic bag that had been stolen from the victim’s home a few days prior.

“What he says is, ‘hey, that’s my bag!’ So he watches the guy and sees where the guy goes into a house,” Kennedy said.

Officials investigated the incident and found that Payne and Pillear were connected to the house in question. They also tied the couple to a stolen item that surfaced at a pawn shop in the area, Kennedy said.

“So now we had two cases involving these folks, so we had enough to put the search warrant together,” Kennedy added.

Further investigation revealed there had been more than two dozen burglaries in the couple’s neighborhood since October 15, 2012, Kennedy said.

“A lot of minor little things taken, but constant burglaries,” Kennedy said. “Jewelry, X-boxes in particular, anything like that.”

Detectives obtained arrest warrants for the couple, along with search warrants for two locations, based on the ongoing burglary investigation, Kennedy said. Palmdale Station detectives, with the assistance of the Partners Against Crimes Unit, served the warrants Tuesday morning.

“We found an array of credit cards, membership cards to stores, things like that,” Kennedy said. “We ran some information from those cards and found three more different crimes… so right now we have five crimes – burglaries and thefts – that we’re going to attribute to these two suspects that we put in custody today.”

The couple’s two children – a 3-year-old girl and a 9-year-old girl – were at home when authorities conducted the search warrant.

“We took the children into protective custody since the parents were going to jail, plus the conditions were not very good for children there,” Kennedy said.

The house had no running water and every toilet in the house was overflowing with feces, according to Palmdale Station deputy Matthew Pereida.

The burglary investigation is ongoing, and Payne and Pillear each remain jailed on $50,000 bail. Both are due in court Thursday to answer charges.

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