The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

October 9, 2009

Burglar gets prison time

By Matt Snyder

GREENVILLE — With more than a half dozen charges of burglary against him – and drug charges to boot – David Mitchel McCarl’s file in the courts needed its own separate box.

Friday, after admitting to police about his string of burglaries and naming names as to who helped him, McCarl, 21, of 3 N. Second St., Greenville, was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison.

Greenville-West Salem Township Police Chief Dennis Stephens found McCarl, with latex gloves, at 8 a.m. Sept. 24, 2008, in the basement of 71 N. Second St. in Greenville.

McCarl was picked up for additional charges last November.

In a series of interviews, McCarl detailed a number of burglaries and implicated Bo Bartholomew in several of the crimes, police said. Bartholomew, 20, still faces charges in a handful of burglaries.

In one of their heists, McCarl told police, Bartholomew used a police scanner from his volunteer firefighter days to narrowly evade capture when they stole guns from a hunting camp on Ohle Road, Perry Township.

McCarl said he and Bartholomew burglarized a Pennsylvania Game Commission building on Old Perry Highway, Sandy Creek Township; a Sandy Creek Township home; two Ohle Road homes in New Vernon Township; and a home on Gravatt Road in Perry Township.

On his own, McCarl admitted to burglarizing a friend’s house in Worth Township and to twice stealing from his grandmother’s house on Center Church Road, Liberty Township.

McCarl stole tools, a safe for its scrap metal, TVs, a CD player, a DVD player, jewelry, coins, china, tanned deer hides and mounted deer heads, a mounted bobcat, fishing tackle, golf clubs, several rifles and shotguns, a revolver, and a video camera, police said.

He pleaded guilty to defiant trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia in May and on Sept. 29 pleaded guilty to a consolidated count of burglary.

In seeking a light sentence, defense attorney Dan Davis said McCarl was picked up on only one or two burglaries and his client gave police information about the others.. He’s spent 318 days in jail, while the suspects he implicated have remained largely free. He also said McCarl has a significant drug problem.

Police said Bartholomew acted as an informant in a separate gun theft in which McCarl was not involved. Police said Bartholomew told them about a group of teens who were charged with stealing $40,000 worth of guns from a Perry Township woman’s home in August 2008.

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