Christopher Jackson (Riverside Police Department)
Detectives in Riverside, California, say they've wrangled their "snake burglar" — a man they believe is responsible for at least 70 commercial burglaries over the last two years.
The first burglary allegedly took place in July 2021. Riverside police said they realized they had a serial slithering suspect once they reviewed multiple pieces of surveillance footage from different businesses of the man with the same M.O. Officers dubbed the suspect the "snake burglar" because the suspect would typically remove a windowpane to break into a business — and then crawl along the floor to avoid any motion activation to alarm systems.
Once the suspect was in, he would typically search for a safe, cut it open and steal money.
Police said they finally caught up to their guy on April 12 after they received a call from a security company that noticed a man peering into the front of a local business then started tampering with weather stripping around a window.
Officers said they spotted the suspect — Christopher Jackson — outside the business with his hands up. Come to find out, Jackson had been arrested several times before for other crimes and was recently sentenced to serve six sentences of 16 months in jail after pleading guilting to 23 felonies. But due to overcrowding in the jail system, police said he only had to serve 10 days in jail and was released in November 2022.
Christopher Jackson (Riverside Police Department)
Seven felony warrants were out for Jackson's arrest when police caught him outside the business. He was arrested and booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center and is being held on a $100,000 bail. Officers said they found methamphetamine on him during the booking process.
The Riverside Police Department's property crimes unit will continue to look into additional related break-ins to determine if their "snake burglar" slithered his way into any other businesses.
