Suspect nabbed; officer injured

By Gregg Rettig

Editor

Thanks to the quick response of London Police officers and Madison County Sheriff’s Office deputies, an attempted early-morning break-in at Carter Lumber was foiled.

London Police arrested Patrick Kessler, 22, of London, and charged him with breaking and entering, vandalism, obstructing official business and possession of criminal tools.

He also had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear out of Madison County Common Pleas Court.

Kessler is incarcerated at Tri-County Regional Jail.

At approximately 1:30 a.m. Monday, London Police officers responded to a closed commercial business, Carter Lumber, 312 Lafayette St., on a burglary alarm.

On arrival and inspection of the fenced property, officers found a hole cut into the fence on the north side of the fence line and an open door on one of the property’s warehouses.

When police entered the warehouse, a white male in a dark-colored hooded sweat shirt, jeans and boots, was attempting to crawl on top of a rack of wood to hide.

When spotted by police, the man jumped off of the rack and fled through the warehouse, exiting back into the lumber yard through another warehouse door. Police chased the man, who used a set of stacked pallets to climb and jump over the yard’s fence into an open field; back on the north side of the property.

London Police, along with deputies from the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, quickly surrounded the area and chased Kessler on foot through a field and then through a wooded area just north of the lumber yard.

The Madison County Sheriff’s Office dispatched its K9 unit, upon request from the police department, to assist in tracking the man when he laid down in heavy brush.

Approximately 15 minutes later Kessler, emerged near Lafayette Street where the foot pursuit continued when a deputy spotted the man crossing the street into Walmart’s parking lot.

Kessler ran down a fence line behind homes on the north side of Braxton Boulevard, beside Walmart, before crossing the street at Stansbury Drive.

Police officers chased the man into the backyard of another home on Braxton Boulevard, where he was shot with a Taser stun gun weapon and apprehended.

A London Police officer suffered minor injuries during the foot pursuit.

A search and inspection of the rest of the Carter Lumber business found that a hole had been cut into the siding on the back of the main retail building.

An entrance had been forcefully made into the storage area of the main building and then another hole had been made through an interior wall into a second section of the main building where tools are kept.

The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation was contacted to process the crime scene.