BATH — A Lewiston man with a criminal history is in custody after he allegedly broke into a home and several vehicles on Oak Grove Avenue on Sunday and stole jewelry and a laptop computer, according to Bath Police Department Lt. Stan Cielinski.
Joshua Amaral, 28, of Lewiston was arrested Sunday in connection with the burglary and on two unrelated warrants.
The residents arrived home at about 5 p.m. Sunday to discover that someone had broken in through a window. A short time later, officers received a report from a nearby residence that several cars had been broken into and that numerous items were missing. Police learned that Amaral and a female companion had taken a taxi to a hotel in Brunswick. The taxi driver told Bath police that the couple gave him a piece of jewelry as collateral for cash. The jewelry allegedly had been taken from the burglarized home on Oak Grove Avenue.
Working with the Brunswick Police Department, Bath police located the couple in a room at America’s Inn on Pleasant Street in Brunswick. Approximately six large bags of suspected stolen property were recovered from the room, some of which police say linked Amaral to the car break-ins on Oak Grove Avenue. Cielinski said Amaral was likely in Bath because of his relationship with the woman who got into the cab with him. The woman, who is a longtime Bath-area resident, has not been charged in the incident, though Cielinski said the investigation is continuing.
In addition to the burglary charge, Amaral was arrested on warrants out of Lewiston for failure to appear in court for burglary of a motor vehicle and failure to appear in court for a charge of carrying a concealed weapon and violating conditions of release. Amaral is also wanted on a nonextraditable warrant out of Florida for fraudulent use of a credit card. According to Cielinski, the Sagadahoc County District Attorney’s Office was adding charges of theft and violating conditions of release against Amaral.
Amaral’s bail was set at $5,000 bail on the Class B burglary charge and he was being held at Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset Monday awaiting his first appearance in West Bath District Court Monday afternoon.
Cielinski said investigators are trying to determine whether Amaral is linked to several other burglaries in Bath during the month of October.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done in this case,” he said.
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