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PROVO — Police have arrested a man they say broke into a Provo Police Department evidence area to retrieve his bicycle.
Provo Police Sgt. Nisha King said such a heist has never happened before at the department, and police are now looking at how to make the evidence area more secure.
"This is a first," King said.
According to a police affidavit, David Elwin Snow, 37, of Provo, and his brother showed up at the police department on Dec. 18 asking for the bicycle. King said Thursday that the bike had been booked into the evidence area when it was recovered from a man who had been arrested for an unrelated issue.
However, because Snow had never reported the bike stolen, King said it took some time for police to try to verify the bike was his. They left Snow and his brother alone, and when they returned, the two men were gone, King said.
But having seen where the bike was being stored in an outdoor area of the police station, the two men returned that night to get it back, according to the affidavit.
Police didn't learn the bike was gone until the man who had been accused of taking the bike in the first place was arrested again, reporting he had heard the two men had gotten the bicycle out of the police station and taken it to their grandmother's house, King said.
According the affidavit, Snow's brother "had been bragging that they (the brothers) had 'pulled off the crime of the century and broken into the police department.'"
Officers located the bike at Snow's grandmother's home on Wednesday and arrested him.
"Ultimately he was (accused of) burglary, because he went into the enclosed, locked structure of the police department," King said. "He was not (accused of) theft because it was his bicycle."
While Snow initially told police he didn't know where the bicycle was, he changed his story about 20 minutes later when it was located, saying instead that he had seen someone else riding it, assaulted them and took it back, the affidavit states.
No charges have been filed in the case.
Both Snow and his brother have extensive criminal histories in the state.
