Two teens arrested for Pro-X burglary

January 26, 2011

Two Boundary County teens are in custody in the Kootenai County Juvenile Detention Center after being charged for Tuesday for allegedly breaking into Pro-X Building Supply. Hopefully, their period of confinement will allow them to contemplate a career different from the one they appear to have embarked on ... if as guilty as the evidence makes them appear, it's obvious they aren't smart enough to be thieves. Trevor S. Koehn, 561 Rigby Road, Bonners Ferry, and Tyler J. Morris, 198 Sandy Ridge Road, Naples, both 17, are each facing charges of burglary and malicious injury to property after store video captured their antics in detail ... despite their apparent best attempts to leave no clues behind. According to Pro-X employee Troy Twining, contractor sales, employees opening the store Tuesday morning immediately knew something was amiss; computers were torn apart and stacked in the hallways and the store was a mess. It had snowed Monday night and into Tuesday morning, so the culprits point of ingress was fairly obvious; they scaled the fence and then crossed the yard, leaving pretty fair tracks all the way, to reach a back door which they allegedly pried open, leaving obvious marks of a pry bar. Before going in, they donned ski masks. Then they systematically went through all the offices, ripping apart more than a dozen computers, and taking out the most crucial part, the hard drive, from each of them. "It looks like they were trying to disable the cameras or take any video evidence  held on the hard drives," Troy said. That plan missed, but it dealt a serious set-back to the business, which reopened on time Wednesday morning after spending all day Tuesday closed, not only to allow sheriff's investigators untrammeled evidence, but to get their business computer system restored enough to reopen and to assure customers that the setback hadn't affected its obligations, either to its customers or its suppliers. Fortunately, all the hard drives, and the data they held, were recovered. "The phones were ringing off the hook Tuesday," Troy said, "and we couldn't answer them with all that was going on." After noticing the disarray and the mess, the crew opening the store held off unlocking the doors and called for help. Despite the trashed computers, some mangled beyond repair but most taken apart with a bit more finesse ... the crooks missed the target they were aiming for ... the computer that held the video surveillance record. Apparently unknown to them, that record also included audio, and nearly three hours of evidence ... the duration of the time they are accused of being in the store, were captured. It's unlikely that they will be nominated for an award for their performance. "After the computers were damaged, they began lifting their masks," Troy said. "They were heard several times calling each other by name." The pair left behind not only the video and audio record, during which they looked directly into the cameras they thought they had shut down, sans mask. In addition, they behind a good many fingerprints, a bit of blood and other forensic evidence which deputies collected in quick order. The evidence the suspected culprits, Koehn and Morris, left behind not only implicates them in this crime, but may well tie into and solve some recent others. In addition to damaging the computers, around $500 in cash was taken and, in a showroom full of high-end tools and equipment, Troy said, several pocket knives and flashlights were also taken. Except for the cash, all the stolen merchandise was recovered. Troy estimates that the cost to the store will exceed $30,000, including the loss of a day's business, and said it will likely take up to two weeks before the computer system is fully restored.