RUMFORD — Police legwork, Facebook and a driver charged with operating after suspension helped police solve the April theft of a purse from a Hannaford grocery cart inside the store.
The purse contained $150, Sgt. Douglas Maifeld said Tuesday.
Maifeld summoned Ruthann Leblanc, 63, of Canton, on a misdemeanor theft charge.
Leblanc, who police accused of stealing the purse, will be arraigned on Aug. 2 in Rumford District Court.
“It made my victim very happy,” Maifeld said.
The victim, he said, bought some milk and walked away, forgetting to take her purse. Surveillance video shows a woman entering the store and putting her stuff atop the purse and walking the cart to the produce section, Maifeld said.
“After being in the store 72 seconds, the woman walked out with two purses,” he said. “The stolen purse was stuffed in a recycled shopping bag.”
The video revealed the suspect, who didn’t buy anything, leaving in a white Ford Taurus.
“So we knew what to look for: a white Ford Taurus, and then one day officer (Dave) Hodgson said he saw a white Taurus,” Maifeld said.
The license plate was run through the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles and police learned the owner had a suspended driver’s license, so an officer pulled over the car.
The driver wasn’t the purse theft suspect and didn’t realize her license had been suspended over a health-related issue, Maifeld said. He said the woman got her license reinstated the next day.
When she learned police were looking for a white Taurus, she told police she had seen one like hers in town.
Maifeld said he checked on that Taurus, but the registered owner was a guy and he was in the hospital.
He said the man’s caretaker/friend was questioned and told police it couldn’t have been him.
It took a while to get footage of the video, but when they did, Maifeld posted the suspect’s photograph on the Police Department’s Facebook page on May 24.
The man’s caretaker photographed the picture using her cell phone and called police on Sunday, telling them that she saw the suspect and she was wearing the same sweater from the surveillance video.
“That’s her! That’s her!” the woman told Maifeld.
She said she saw the woman leaving Walmart in a white Taurus.
Police ran that white Taurus’ license plate and got Leblanc’s information, Maifeld said.
“The captain interviewed her and she admitted doing it and was charged with theft,” he said of Capt. Daniel Garbarini.
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