WACO, Texas – Shortly before Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy disappeared last month, he told an assistant coach that he had twice been the victim of thefts, Dennehy’s summer-league coach said.

Dennehy told assistant coach Rodney Belcher that his car stereo had been stolen and that cash had been taken from his apartment, said Nelson Washington of Redwood City, Calif., who coached the Bay Area Ballers, Dennehy’s Amateur Athletic Union team.

Washington said Belcher told him of Dennehy’s complaints during a mid-June phone conversation after Dennehy disappeared.

“He said Pat had said he was having problems,” Washington said. “Pat had talked to him and said that someone had gotten in his car and taken his stereo and that some money had been stolen out of his apartment.”

Dennehy’s actions before he disappeared more than three weeks ago have become a focal point of the investigation.

Some people close to the player have said he felt threatened.

Dennehy’s girlfriend, Jessica De La Rosa of Albuquerque, N.M., has said he told two Baylor assistant coaches that he had been threatened and became frustrated because the coaches did not act.

She has declined to identify the assistant coaches.

Baylor head coach Dave Bliss has said Dennehy never made members of the school’s coaching staff aware of “safety concerns or personal threats.”

Washington, the legal guardian of Senque Carey, a University of New Mexico basketball player and a close friend of Dennehy’s, said he was unaware that Dennehy was missing until Dennehy’s stepfather, Brian Brabazon, asked him in mid-June whether he had seen or spoken to the player recently.

Washington said he called Belcher and asked about Dennehy’s whereabouts. During that conversation, he said, Belcher related that Dennehy had come to see him about the alleged thefts.

Washington said he believes that both incidents occurred in the days leading up to Dennehy’s disappearance, because Dennehy did not mention them when he visited Carey in Albuquerque in late May.

“I think everything kind of happened within a week’s time – his car being broken into and then some money being stolen,” he said. “I say that because I know that three weeks before he came up missing, he was in Albuquerque and went to Senque’s house. I don’t think that (the alleged thefts) had happened then.”

Washington said Belcher gave no indication whether the situations had been dealt with by the Baylor coaching staff or reported to police.

“I don’t know what they (Baylor coaches) did,” he said. “I didn’t get the full timeline or the full explanation. They could have” done something.

“I’m trying not to blame anybody until there are more facts. People love Pat and want answers. It’s real quick and easy to be upset with the coaching staff because Pat’s at Baylor, but I don’t want to do that.”

Waco police spokesman Steve Anderson said his department has no record of complaints related to Dennehy, other than the missing-persons report, which Dennehy’s stepfather filed June 19. He said he doesn’t know whether investigators are looking at the alleged thefts as factors in Dennehy’s disappearance.

Belcher did not respond to phone messages from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Belcher joined the Baylor coaching staff last season after spending the 2001-02 season as an assistant coach at the University of New Mexico. Dennehy was a member of the New Mexico team during the 2000-01 and 2001-02 seasons before transferring to Baylor last year.

According to a search warrant affidavit prepared by Waco police Detective Robert Fuller on June 23, a police informant in Delaware said a cousin of Carlton Dotson, a Baylor player from Hurlock, Md., told him that Dotson admitted shooting Dennehy in the head while the two were firing guns in the Waco area. Police have labeled Dotson “a person of interest” but not a suspect.

Authorities have twice searched a 52-acre tract northeast of Waco owned by a carpenter, Darron Cox, who befriended Dennehy and Dotson during the spring.

Fuller’s affidavit also cited De La Rosa’s statement that Dennehy had been threatened by an individual identified as “Harvey.” De La Rosa has since told reporters that the individual is Harvey Thomas, a coveted junior college recruit who stayed in Dennehy’s apartment for a time after signing with Baylor in April.

Cox has said Dennehy and Dotson told him they bought firearms after someone pointed a gun at them in early June. Cox’s wife, Tammy, has said the individual who pointed the gun was another Baylor player whose name she does not know.

Washington said Dennehy has never shown an interest in guns and would probably do so only if he believed his safety was in jeopardy.

“For him to buy one, I think it would have to be more along the lines of, “I’m getting this for protection,’ ” he said.

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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Baylor

AP-NY-07-07-03 2019EDT