It started with a very frightening night for a Santa Rosa woman. A resident of north Santa Rosa, on Parker Hill Road near Chanate, reported to police that she was awakened in her home in the early morning hours of Thursday, August 28. She discovered there were two men in her home, and screamed. The sudden noise must have frightened the prowlers, and both left in a hurry.
She called police at 3:27 am, according to a Santa Rosa PD press release, and officers arrived to investigate. They interviewed the woman, and found that she was missing her purse and her Toyota 4Runner, which had been parked in the garage. A further inspection of the home revealed a dropped car key to a Lexus. The woman assured them it was not hers, so it must have been dropped by one of the intruders. When the officers completed their initial investigation and left the home.
The victim lives in a home on Parker Hill Road. Her car was later found up the same street.
They were not gone long. As the woman, no doubt shaken from the night’s events, got up the next morning she heard someone yelling outside her home, at about 7 am. A young man was trying to tell her he had found her purse, but had lost his car key in her house. He didn’t have time to explain why he was in her house to lose his key and find her purse, or why that might be good news to her, because rather than make the exchange, the woman phoned police. Officers quickly arrived and found the young man near the home, and quickly detained him. He was identified as 23-year-old Alexander Paul Arrabit.
Checking the neighborhood, officers found a Lexus that matched the key found in the home that night. Perhaps stranded in the area, Arrabit was apparently trying to get the key back so he could escape. His accomplice, who has not been captured or identified, may have taken the stolen Toyota, leaving the Lexus for Arrabit. But it wasn’t his car to begin with. It had been stolen the day before from a car wash on nearby Mendocino Avenue. Arrabit was arrested and booked into Sonoma County Jail on charges of residential burglary, vehicle theft, possession of stolen property, and possession of burglary tools. Arrabit stated that he was currently homeless, though a past arrest record showed his residence in Santa Rosa, across town on Jennings Road.
If Arrabit’s accomplice took the Toyota 4Runner stolen from the home, he didn’t go far. At 11:00 pm that night an officer checking the Parker Hill Road area near a condominium complex found the stolen vehicle. Inside were two high-end bicycles – a red Specialized S-Works and a yellow Giant OCR3. They had not been stolen from the woman’s house, but are suspected to have been stolen from someone else. Both bikes appeared to be customized and very valuable.
Detective Gavin Holzapfel has asked that anyone with information on the possible second suspect, or who may be the owner of the bikes, to contact him at 707-543-4024.
