SAN ANTONIO – Leon Valley police say they have recovered coins, currency and silverware stolen in the brazen overnight burglary of a coin dealer last month.
After getting a tip, police said they had a suspect picked up on outstanding warrants and then searched his home.
In the home, they found some of the estimated $44,000 to $50,000 worth of merchandise stolen from Texas Coins on March 12.
“Just throughout the apartment things were hidden,” said Leon Valley police Chief Joseph Salvaggio.
The suspect still hasn’t been formally charged, so KSAT is not naming him at this time. However, police credited KSAT’s previous story with helping to find him.
“One of the viewers from Channel 12 actually called in to somebody that that viewer knew, who contacted us saying ‘we believe this is the suspect,’” Salvaggio said.
KSAT 12 reported on the beak-in on March 15. Police said thieves cut through the roof of Texas Coins, rifled through the store and cut a hole in the safe before breaking through the wall of the neighboring business and escaping out the back.
The break-in was caught on camera and even featured a shot of one man’s face.
Police believe their suspect is linked to numerous other burglaries and was not acting alone. They think his brother and possibly another family member helped him.
“These guys, this was their MO. They’d go through the ceiling, or go through the wall, and cut into the safes,” Salvaggio said. “And they were pretty prolific - committing burglaries of buildings on a regular basis.”
Texas Coins owner Larry Harmon was reluctant to say definitively whether the items found at the apartment were his without the chance to inspect it in person. However, the silverware they found there stood out.
“When I saw that and it was in the Ziploc bags that I typically use, I said that looks like a smoking gun right there,” Harmon said.
Police had no doubts, though, with Salvaggio noting that they didn’t just find a single spoon or fork.
“That combined with the coins combined with the old money that was recovered and the fact of what’s been recovered in the pawn shops - all of those things combined. It’s definitely his,” Salvaggio said.
Harmon said there’s still more missing than what was found in the apartment, but he said he never had much hope of recovering the goods anyway. Instead, he was focused on something else.
“I want the people prosecuted. I want them put away,” Harmon said.