River Falls man charged with multiple burglary and theft crimes

Talk about it

Within a 15-day span in March, Jonathan Nitchals went on an alleged crime spree in the City of River Falls that could land him in jail for a long time.

Nitchals, 22, 105 E. Elm St., Apt. 1, River Falls, made his first court appearance Monday in Pierce County Circuit Court, as he was charged with five counts of misdemeanor theft, four counts of entry into a locked vehicle, and criminal damage to property, three counts of burglary and one count of methamphetamine possession.

The burglary and possession are the only felony charges.

The charges relate back to March 26 when, according to the criminal complaint, Nitchals was arrested in River Falls at his residence on a probation violation, as he admitted to using both marijuana and methamphetamine.

While conducting a search warrant of the home, River Falls police noticed in the refrigerator and freezer items that had a sticker addressed on the package to the South Fork Caf .

Just earlier that week, the caf reported they were burglarized and the items taken matched the items found at Nitchals' apartment.

In addition, River Falls police seized from the apartment a CW gear backpack that held a Garmin GPS, a Cobra radar detector, an alpine stereo and a DVD player, along with a Nikon camera and boxes from the meats found in the freezer.

The complaint states that, on those boxes, were stickers that had the name South Fork Caf .

When River Falls police tried to gather more information from Nitchals, they noticed the shoes he was wearing had a similar tread pattern to footprints found at a burglary reported earlier that week at 1431 Wildcat Ct., in which seven people reported damage and/or burglary to their garage units.

Further investigation showed the tread pattern was similar to what was found at that crime scene.

Get the complete story in this week's print editions of the Pierce County Herald and the River Falls Journal.

Tags: news, river_falls, crime, burglary