An Army veteran arrested Sunday for allegedly breaking into buildings on the Castle High School campus may also be a suspect in other recent Windward Oahu burglaries, officials said.
Kevin J. Merk, 22, charged with two counts of second-degree burglary and one count of second-degree attempted burglary, was being held Monday in lieu of $150,000 bail at Oahu Community Correctional Center. He was arrested on the high school campus about 3:55 a.m. Sunday.
Police went to the Kaneohe Bay Drive school to investigate an alarm and found a man wearing a glove walking from a classroom building. The man tried to elude officers, but he was found and arrested.
Police said louvers from at least one classroom had been removed.
Rick Murray, safety and security manager for Windward Community College, said campus officials believe Merk was involved in five break-ins at the college, on four nights from mid-December through last week.
Murray said campus security examined video of varying quality from the break-ins.
"We could tell, even though there were different levels of pictures, they were the same person," he said.
Among the items taken during the burglaries were a bicycle, a laptop computer and hundreds of dollars in cash, Murray said. The money was taken from the library, which has been burglarized four times since Dec. 13, and a large donation jar left in the open was taken from another campus building, he said.
During the evening of Dec. 29 and the early morning Dec. 30, a burglar who appeared to be the same man broke into both the library and another school building, Murray said.
Among the items taken was a school laptop computer, he said; subsequently someone began signing in on the stolen computer as "Kevin Merk," he said.
Then, during the late evening of Jan. 19 or early morning of Jan. 20, a security camera in the library recorded a clear image of the burglar’s face.
"We were able to determine that person was the same person who was on our campus … the night that the other two burglaries had taken place," Murray said. "We put that on a CD and gave that to police. The police were then able to match this person with a name."
Murray said he was told by police that Merk may be responsible for other burglaries in the Windward area, including at St. Ann’s School and the Kokokahi YWCA.
Police would not provide further details in the continuing investigation.
Officials said Merk served in the Army until November, and that he apparently has been homeless since then.
Merk is expected to be arraigned on Monday.
