Students Cut Classes for Burglaries, Police Say

Even as two high school students plotted to break into empty Potomac homes, police say, the 16-year-olds seemed more worried about the repercussions for cutting class.

The teenagers have been charged in nine burglaries of unoccupied homes between Oct. 10 and 26, mostly daytime break-ins at homes near the red-brick campus of Winston Churchill High School. Their names and some other details of the case were not released because they are juveniles.

State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler said he could not recall a case with quite the same "fact pattern": a pair of serial burglars who, according to police, forged notes from home so they would be excused from class while they prowled.

According to police, the teens burglarized homes Oct. 10, 13, 19 and 26, all school days. They knocked on doors and entered only unoccupied homes. They took cash and other things, including such electronics as iPods and laptop computers, Gansler said. Police recovered three-quarters of the property at the boys' homes but found only 10 percent of the cash. They did not give the value of either or disclose the date of the arrests.

"It was more an arrest on paper," said Lucille Baur, a police spokeswoman. "The detectives went to their homes. Their parents cooperated."

Some in the Churchill community -- the model for the fictionalized teen-angst drama "Beverly Hills 90210" -- were plainly baffled by the arrests: Why would anyone at Churchill, a high school where 98.5 percent of students graduate, and only 3 percent qualify for federal meal subsidies, need to plunder a neighbor's home?

"There's no obvious reason to be doing that," said Ted Brandt, a Churchill senior.

"I guess they were trying to be cool," said Patricia Garcia, 18 and also a senior. "It didn't work, though."

Gansler said he did not know the socioeconomic backgrounds of the two teenagers arrested, whom some fellow students described as middle class. Police said the boys had not divulged a motive.

"There are wealthy kids who are at Churchill, but there are also kids who are not particularly wealthy at Churchill," Gansler said.

A fundamental question hangs over the case: What motivates children in an affluent suburb to commit a property crime? The same puzzlement gripped parents and students at nearby Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda last spring, when five students were charged in the armed robbery of a Smoothie King.

Gansler said the cases are unrelated, and he dismissed the notion of a crime wave among affluent teens.

"I don't think this is a trend," he said. "I think it's two kids on a burglary spree."

The boys will remain in the custody of their parents until their case is resolved. They will receive correspondence from the juvenile justice system outlining the next step, which may include a public or private hearing before a judge. The juvenile justice system has considerable latitude in determining potential penalties, Baur said.

On the streets where the burglars struck, homeowners voiced relief that the police had apparently found the responsible parties. Residents on the 12100 block of Devilwood Drive, for example, said their block hadn't suffered a break-in in the previous 30 years.

Parents and students said that, apart from the news coverage, the arrests had generated little buzz on and around the esteemed high school's campus.

"Most of our kids are good kids," said Robyn Solomon, president of the school's PTSA. "They were probably good kids who were just being stupid."