Man Accused In Burglaries Told WCCO He Was Living Out Of Van After House Explosion
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Business owners across western Wisconsin are breathing a sigh of relief after a suspected serial burglar is behind bars.
Jonathan Laboda has been charged with two break-ins so far in Burnett County, but law enforcement nearby suspect he's behind many more.
As it turns out, there's a connection to a tragedy in St. Paul that has put Laboda on the news before.
The noise in the hallway caught Faith Schloneger's attention. As the sous chef arrived early at Tesora Restaurant in Siren to prep a lunch just days before Christmas. She opened the doors to confront a man using a saw on the cash machine.
"He was like, 'I'm just here repairing the ATM.' And I was like, 'Are you kidding me? It's ripped open,'" Schloneger recalled.
A man wearing gloves and a ski mask ran out as soon as he saw Schloneger.
Siren Police Chief Chris Sybers had been paying close attention to the break-ins he'd been hearing about close by.
"If she wouldn't have walked in at that time, we would have had two more unsolved burglaries," Sybers said.
One of them would have been in early December at a bar in Webb Lake. Burnett County deputies say the same suspect spent two hours inside taking everything he could from food to cash to coins he found in the pool tables.
"This is the safe out of Tesoras Restaurant," Sybers said.
That morning at Tesoras, officers eventually found the man in a nearby garage. Police say Laboda had $3,000 in his pocket and evidence connected to other crimes, like a break-in at an auto parts store that very same morning.
"His van was full of tools," Syber said.
It's the same van that, in November, Laboda told WCCO he was living in. After an explosion in St. Paul leveled a house and displaced a dozen people.
"The tough part right now trying to figure out what to do," Laboda told a WCCO news crew in November.
Law enforcement across Western Wisconsin are now looking at Laboda as the prime suspect in a sting of other break-ins from the last few months.
"It's quite huge to catch someone who has been terrorizing our local establishments," Sybers said.
Officers also say Laboda swallowed a bag of heroin at the time of his arrest. They believe the burglaries are all connected to drugs; Sybers told WCCO nearly all of the burglaries in his area typically are.
