In the early hours of Nov. 10, a burglar made a daring entry into the Slice of Towson through a roof vent, stripped naked and robbed the pizza shop. Today, 11 days out, a Baltimore County police spokesman said authorities have identified and charged that alleged nude burglar.
On Saturday, police arrested Jonathan Karron Newman, 23, of Rosedale. He’s been charged with second- and fourth-degree burglary, malicious destruction of property and other offenses in connection with the burglary.
The pizza shop theft would have been notable anyway given the establishment’s prime downtown Towson location. However, it was more notorious due to what Baltimore County police shared from surveillance cameras at the scene. The first couple images released by authorities on Nov. 15 showed a fully clothed man outside the shop in a parking lot. The next several pictures showed a man, presumably the same one, inside the store almost entirely naked, save for some covering wrapped around his head and shoulders.
Police said that after Newman entered through the roof, he undressed and damaged a hood vent in the kitchen and several cash registers. He then took cash from the registers before fleeing the scene out the front of the shop that morning, police said.
This morning, police spokesman Cpl. John Wachter said in an email that “investigators had developed some information on the suspect on their own,” but that “what really helped put everything together is a car identified by the pizza shop owner.”
Apparently, Slice of Towson owner Paul Rizas had identified a suspicious car to officers. When detectives looked inside it, they found “the information they needed” on Newman, Wachter said.
Court records show Newman posted $50,000 bond yesterday. He has a trial date scheduled for 8 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 16.
Rizas is likely happy to know police have charged a suspect in the case. He was offering up free pizza to anyone with information that led to the suspect’s arrest, according to a Facebook post from Friday. We’ve reached out to him for comment and are waiting to hear back.
