DETROIT – It is the stuff you might see in a movie or television show.
Troy police say their suspect got into four homes and robbed them recently.
D’Mario Darrell Thornton, 40, was arraigned Tuesday afternoon and is being held on a $45,000 bond after getting arrested early Sunday morning.
Joshua Jones from the Troy Police Department told Local 4 News officers first suspected Thornton after the first home invasion a week ago in the neighborhood near Somerset Collection.
“We had some different surveillance videos around the area, cameras and commercial buildings, stuff like that,” said Jones.
Immediately detectives went to work and followed Thornton to a Troy neighborhood at Livernois and Big Beaver Saturday night.
They say he went to work robbing two homes.
“I give our guys a lot of credit for being able to do that. This was on a weekend. This occurred, they came in, they were off duty, got alerted, he was likely going to start working, looking for residences to break into and got onto him pretty quickly,” said Jones.
Officers attempted to arrest him before he got into his vehicle, but Jones says Thornton threw his loot into the air and ran and kept running for miles until he got desperate looking for a way out and started checking doors in homes near Waddles and I-75.
“He found an open door on a residence in Waddles and I-75 and went in and used their phone to call for a ride,” added Jones.
Jones says Thornton got in and out of a home with a landline undetected.
When his ride showed up in the neighborhood that’s when they nabbed him.
The Troy Police Department says part of the reason Thornton was so tough to catch is he has a long record and wasn’t about to go back to prison easily.
One of the questions police have is how he was able to find vacant homes in a pandemic and collect $150,000 in cash and jewelry.
Read more: Metro Detroit crime stories