Alert pups lead to Edgewater generator thief, police say

An Edgewater man is jailed after police say he swiped a neighbor's generator.

Jeremy A. Swartz, 31, is charged with unarmed burglary of an occupied dwelling, possession and use of burglary tools, and grand theft between $300 and $500, according to an Edgewater Police Department charging affidavit.

One could say nabbing a suspected generator thief is for the dogs.

When William Packard's dogs Bella and Corky started making a fuss in his 1928 Juniper Drive backyard a little after 2 a.m. Friday morning, Packard knew something was off, he said in a phone interview Saturday. After Packard peeked into the yard from his kitchen, he said, he saw a man trying to make off with his red, Husky 5000W power generator. He ran into the bedroom to throw on some clothes and said he heard the generator shut off.

"I said to myself, 'Son of a gun. He took it,'" said Packard of the $1,200 generator. Packard called police, an incident report states.

Packard said police got there so fast there was still a trail left from the heavy generator in the damp grass to his neighbor's back door.

According to the report, police responded to the scene at 2:14 a.m. and K-9 officer Kilo tracked the suspect's smell from the bolt cutters the thief left behind, over a damaged fence to a neighbor's house at 1925 Kumquat Dr. where police say Swartz tried to make a hasty exit through a bathroom window. The report states Swartz was stopped by the police dogs, and while checking other windows, police spotted a similar generator partially hidden in a bedroom closet.

The report states that a resident of the house, Diana Muchow, 34, began pointing at Swartz saying, "He did it." Meanwhile, Swartz insisted he was at a convenience store around the corner.

Problem was, that's where the cops were when they got the call, the report states, and Swartz recanted and accused another male resident of the house of the theft, insisting he was just "present at the burglary, but did not actually steal the generator."

In the phone interview, Packard said he saw two men in his backyard.

Swartz was arrested just after 2:30 a.m. and is being held at the Volusia County Branch Jail on $20,000 bail.