A homeless man has been charged with burglarizing four Naperville businesses — two of them twice — over a seven-week span, officials said.
Prudencio Ugaban, 54, allegedly started his crime spree with an 11:35 p.m. July 24 break-in at the Spice Mart, 1552 N. Aurora Road, according to a news release from the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office and the Naperville Police Department.
Other alleged burglaries were committed at:
- 12:30 a.m. July 28, Marathon gas station, 991 W. Ogden Ave.;
- 2:11 a.m. Aug. 15, Spice Mart, 1552 N. Aurora Road;
- 4:35 a.m. Aug. 27, Ogden Wine and Spirit, 1568 W. Ogden Ave.;
- 4:59 a.m. Sept. 5, Bombay Chopsticks, 1568 W. Ogden Ave.;
- 2:10 a.m. Sept. 7, Marathon gas station, 991 W. Ogden Ave.
Ugaban was taken into custody Saturday after being found inside a vehicle with a smashed window in the 1500 block of West Ogden Avenue, the release said. He was charged with six counts of burglary. No information on how police connected Ugaban to the break-ins was released.
At his first court appearance Monday, Ugaban was released from police custody pending trial provided he has no contact with and does not enter any of the stores involved in the robberies, the release said.
State’s Attorney Robert Berlin, in a statement on Ugaban’s release, said the situation is an argument for why the state’s Safe-T-Act needs to be amended.
“What I find troubling … is the fact that under the Safe-T-Act, this defendant was not eligible for detention even though he had allegedly committed six burglaries in a relatively short amount of time,” Berlin said.
“This fact illustrates the need for changes to the State’s Safe-T-Act to give judges more discretion at a defendant’s First Appearance Court pre-trial detention hearing. As I have consistently stated since the inception of the Act, judges, not the legislature, are in the best position to decide whether a defendant in any particular case should be detained pre-trial.”