Police seek additional victims after man charged in series of burglaries around Nob Hill
Jul. 5—Albuquerque police are asking possible victims to come forward after arresting a man accused of similar break-ins in the neighborhoods around Nob Hill.
Dorsett Matthews, 42, is charged with two counts of aggravated burglary and one count each of larceny and criminal damage to property.
Matthews has been booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. He has not yet been assigned an attorney.
Gilbert Gallegos, an Albuquerque police spokesman, said the department is asking anyone else who may have had a similar home burglary to call APD at 505-242-COPS.
The burglaries occurred less than 2 miles apart in a neighborhood just east of Carlisle, one near Constitution and the other near Coal.
"The victims he appears to be targeting are elderly in nature and in order to protect future victims from his crime, the importance for his immediate arrest is paramount for the safety of the victims," according to an arrest warrant.
Court records show Matthews has been arrested for burglary several times since 2003. The first few cases were dismissed because he was found incompetent to stand trial.
In subsequent cases, according to court records, Matthews was sentenced to probation and time served, often having spent months in jail between arrest and trial.
Last year, Matthews was sentenced to probation for a 2020 burglary in which he hit a woman in the face with a flashlight, according to court records. Matthews had spent more than three years in jail awaiting trial in that case.
He began a five-year probation sentence in October.
On June 15, a woman called police around 2:15 p.m. and reported a man broke into her home and stole her purse in the 400 block of Sierra SE.
The woman told police a man tried to open her locked front door and then asked for water but she told him to leave, according to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court. The woman said the man then used gardening shears to break a window in the back door and come inside.
Police said the woman told them the man took her purse off the counter and ran outside. Detectives later found security videos of the suspect fleeing from the home holding a purse.
On June 18, police were called around 6:15 a.m. to the 3800 block of La Hacienda NE after a woman reported a burglary and assault. Police found the woman's 87-year-old husband, who uses a walker, still on the ground and initially "unable to get up."
The woman told police she had gone into her garage and saw "the silhouette" of a man inside, according to the complaint. She said she ran into the house with the man "on her heels" and demanding money.
Police said the woman told them the man began searching the rooms frantically, knocking down her husband in the process, before she gave him $150. She said the man then ran out of the house and jumped a backyard wall to escape.
Detectives found the suspect had cut a window screen in the garage to get inside.
Police said a neighbor's security camera captured the suspect's vehicle, a silver SUV, and the suspect peeking around the home before covering his face and going inside.
Detectives connected the two cases after the second burglary and put an alert out on the suspect's SUV, according to the complaint. Police spotted the SUV in Southeast Albuquerque and pulled over the driver, identified as Matthews.
