Odessa police officers looking for a possible prowler Wednesday afternoon ended up arresting a burglary suspect instead.
According to an Odessa Police Department report, a 911 call was made from a local domestic violence shelter around 2 p.m. Wednesday. The caller said they saw a man wearing red pants and white shirt jumping their fence and they thought he might be a batterer looking for his victim.
Officers found a man matching that description, Axtin Kessler Wood, 23, nearby getting into an Uber vehicle along with two other people and a 55-inch Samsung television. According to the report, the officers remembered there had been a burglary a block away the day before and thought perhaps the two were connected.
When they looked up the report, they learned the victim of the burglary named her former boyfriend, Wood, as a possible suspect, the report stated.
The officers met the woman at her home and she noticed her 55-inch Samsung TV was missing from her living room, according to the report.
Wood told officers he found the TV in an alley and “figured it was for anyone to pick up,” the report stated.
A 26-year-old man who was with Wood that afternoon told officers Wood had left him and Mary Dutchover, 18, at a Dollar General store and when he got back, he was sweating profusely. When the Uber driver came to pick them up, he said Wood instructed him to stop for a moment and Wood got out of the car. When he came back from a nearby alley, the man told officers Wood had the TV, according to the report.
Wood was arrested on suspicion of burglary of a habitation, a Class 2 felony punishable by a prison sentence of two to 20 years. He was being held in the Ector County jail as of Friday on a $40,000 surety bond. Online court records show he is awaiting trial on drug possession and tampering with evidence charges filed in July.
Dutchover was cited and released on a possession of drug paraphernalia charge after officers found a methamphetamine pipe in her possession.
