A woman was arrested Tuesday in connection with a rash of burglaries which have plagued the New Hope area over the past few weeks.
Crystal Denise Brown, 23, of 1306 Blackjack Road in Starkville, was arrested at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Hardee’s in Starkville and charged with possession of stolen property. She is being held at the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center on a $5,000 bond.
Lowndes County Chief Deputy Greg Wright told WCBI-TV that the arrest is the first of what will probably be several in connection with robberies in the area.
But Oswalt Road resident Katie Burchfield said this morning that Brown’s arrest doesn’t reassure her, because she is still hearing reports of incidents that are a little too close to home.
Though her house hasn’t been burglarized — a fact she attributes to a well-lit yard and her two dogs — she said her brother and sister-in-law saw someone they believe was attempting to break into their neighbor’s home Tuesday night on Petersburg Road in New Hope. When they saw a car backing up to the house, they walked outside and the car drove away. They believe they spooked the possible burglar, she said.
Burchfield is a member of the Columbus Facebook Watch Group, a citizen-led initiative that’s utilizing social media to connect local residents with one another and help them communicate information about suspicious activities and stay informed about crime in the area.
She said the amount of Facebook posts about break-ins and suspicious activity around town and in her neighborhood doesn’t make her feel safer.
“There’s not just one person breaking into houses right now. Probably with all the publicity, it’s encouraged other people to break in,” Burchfield said.
A few nights ago, she was sleeping on the couch in her home when she was awakened by the sound of breaking glass near the vicinity of her French doors. Petrified, she screamed for her husband, who rushed into the room with a baseball bat. She called 911 and then she and her husband waited, but no burglar appeared. Looking down, she saw that a large painting had fallen off the wall and the glass had broken.
Though she and her husband laughed at themselves, she can’t forget the feeling of absolute terror.
“I don’t know that I would have reacted that way if I hadn’t spent the past week or two reading about it all,” she said. “I thought it didn’t affect me, and then I realized it did.”
But she said the neighborhood watchdogs are a good idea, because it raises awareness.
“The only thing that’s going to save our community is people watching out for each other,” she said.
Wright told The Dispatch last week that the New Hope, Caledonia and Upper North Columbus areas have been particularly hard-hit by burglaries. Burglaries have also been reported just across the Mississippi-Alabama line and in surrounding counties.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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