LEWISTON — It was a man bun that helped police identify a Florida man who police said stole a woman’s credit card and car keys and at least one car in October.
Anthony Waack, 29, of West Palm Beach, Florida, appeared in 8th District Court on Monday on six related felonies; a judge set his bail at $25,000 cash.
Waack was charged with theft by unauthorized taking, unauthorized use of property and four counts of receiving stolen property, all Class C felonies, each punishable by up to five years in prison. He also was charged with failure to stop for an officer, a misdemeanor.
Police wrote in an affidavit that Waack was identified as a man sporting a “man bun” in surveillance video at Food City Grocery in Lisbon on Oct. 17. That’s when he is accused of entering the employee break room at the store. He was described as being short with a medium build, and wearing a black or dark-colored sweatshirt. His brown hair was described as being pulled back into a “man bun.” He appeared to be holding an item on a lanyard.
The video showed the man inside the break room for “just over a minute” before exiting the store, according to police.
Less than hour after he left the store, a worker there reported that her cellphone, debit card and car keys were missing from a purse that had been in the break room.
Police tracked the movements of the woman’s cellphone using its GPS. A selfie photo that had been taken using the phone and stored in the woman’s cloud account showed a man of similar description to the man in the store video and he was sporting a man bun.
Three days after the woman reported the items stolen, police got a call of a possible sighting of a man matching the description in a gray Ford sedan at a Lisbon fast food restaurant.
A police officer ordered the man to stop, but he sped out of the parking lot, Detective Richard St. Amant wrote in an affidavit. Police chased the car, but lost it.
A second officer spotted the car on Route 196, traveling fast in the wrong lane “with no apparent regard for the safety of the other vehicle traffic,” police reported. Police again pursued but the driver failed to pull over and police gave up the chase.
That night, police said, a resident at a Lisbon apartment complex reported to police that her 2002 Dodge minivan had been stolen from a parking space. Other residents of the complex reported items stolen from their vehicles.
One-third of a mile away, police found the Ford sedan the suspect had driven earlier in the day, abandoned on a tote road. The sedan had been reported stolen that day from Palmyra, St. Amant wrote. In the car were a laptop, a prescription medication, a debit card, a camera and cellphone.
Fingerprints from the car would later be found to match Waack’s.
Two days later, law enforcement officers began to string together a series of stolen vehicles, including one from Vermont (whose license plates had been switched) that led to Palmyra, where the Ford sedan had been parked before it was stolen. Police later traced the laptop found in the car to a burglary in West Gardiner, and the camera from a vehicle in Livermore Falls. The debit card had been stolen from a vehicle parked outside a motel in Newport.
Images of the suspect, including his apparent selfie, were sent to the Maine Information Analysis Center for identification using its facial recognition software system. The suspect was identified as Waack.
He had been released from custody in Vermont less than a week earlier after a conviction for operating a vehicle without owner consent. Police said Waack had an active warrant from Massachusetts for a 2017 charge of larceny from a motor vehicle.
Waack’s criminal history is extensive, dating back to 2008 in several states with convictions on similar charges, St. Amant wrote.
As conditions of bail, Judge Leanne Sutton ordered that Waack possess no burglary tools and undergo random searches. His next court appearance is scheduled for February.
Waack didn’t enter pleas because felony charges must be brought by grand jury.
His head appeared to have been shaved.
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