Four men charged with Springfield burglaries

Four central Vermont men are facing felony charges for their alleged roles in several burglaries last fall.


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Noah Jakway

Four men charged with Springfield burglaries By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT | March 31,2016 WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Four central Vermont men are facing felony charges for their alleged roles in several burglaries last fall. Police said the burglaries include break-ins at Springfield’s Rite Aid Pharmacy and Downer’s Four Corners store, along with damaging an ATM machine at Citizens Bank in Springfield Shopping Plaza. Seth Smith, 22, of Perkinsville and Noah Jakway, 18, of Springfield both pleaded innocent to three felony counts of burglary and an additional felony count of unlawful mischief while Liam Vezina, 19, of Chester pleaded innocent to two felony counts of burglary and one felony count of unlawful mischief. Stephen Miller, 24, pleaded innocent to one felony count of burglary, a charge which came about because police said he acted as a lookout during the Downer’s break-in. A fifth alleged participant, a juvenille, has yet to be charged. All four were released from the courthouse on pre-trial conditions, with Jakway ordered to observe a 24-hour curfew at his residence while others were ordered to observe just a nighttime curfew. The Downer’s Four Corners store was broken into shortly before midnight on July 15, 2015, and a surveillance camera inside got a picture of one “skinny white male” with a gray hoodie pulled over his head making off with a red backpack stuffed with nearly $1,000 worth of cigarettes, cigars, alcoholic cider and lemonade, police said. Springfield Police Detective Patrick Call said that after police determined Jakway was a suspect, he confessed to them that burglary “began as an idea for him when there was a bunch of (his friends) at the gorge partying.” Several people were waiting outside the store later that evening for another friend to meet them when “Jakway advised that he did not have any cigarettes and they were out of beer,” adding that, “he was pretty drunk at this time” and so, he told police, he smashed his way in through the front glass display window and took the items before the alarm began to sound, Call said. On Aug. 24, 2015, state police reported that several subjects climbed onto the roof of the Downer’s Four Corners store, pried open a skylight with a crowbar and attempted to open the store safe before giving up on that effort and making off with $400 worth of cigarettes. Call said that Jakway confessed to having had a role in that burglary as well, saying that “he had a big drug problem and when he did this burglary he was high on drugs,” as, he said, were several of the others when the four of them carried out the August break-in. “(Jakway) had drunk a lot of vodka and consumed approximately a gram of cocaine and two or three bags of heroin” when the group decided they wanted to get more cocaine and “Smith brought up that they had got a bunch of money from a (previous) burglary at Downer’s Four Corners that (he) and the juvenile had committed,” Call wrote. Police were alerted by a burglar alarm to an Aug. 25 break-in at Rite Aid in the Springfield Shopping Plaza, and once there, officers also noticed that the ATM machine at the nearby Citizens Bank branch had been heavily damaged. Call wrote that bank officials later put the cost of repairing the vandalized machine at over $23,000. Springfield Detective Anthony Moriglioni wrote that when he interviewed Smith, he confessed that he and Jakway were the masked burglars seen on video who had entered Rite Aid that same evening by throwing rocks through the bottom of the sliding glass door. He said they thought the pharmacy would have “a lot of Percocets” inside, but after the store lights came on and scared them, all they were able to grab was a large bottle of Snapple and a cream soda which ended up getting thrown into the nearby river as they ran away. Jakway told police that Vezina and the juvenile were acting as lookouts in the bushes. Prior to the charges that were filed against Jakway, he’d already appeared in court in February where he entered innocent pleas to a felony count of burglary and a misdemeanor count of unlawful mischief.