Police: DNA Tests Result in Arrest After June Burglary

More than five months after a $45,000 burglary at a New Canaan home, police arrested a 55-year-old resident of a halfway house for state prisoners with drug abuse problems.

New Canaan police arrested Lawrence Ruscoe at state Superior Court in Norwalk, where he appeared in a separate case.

DNA evidence collected at the scene and sent to a state testing laboratory revealed Ruscoe’s DNA, police said. It often takes months for that evidence to be processed, according to police. The lab determination was used to apply for and receive an arrest warrant for Ruscoe, and Ruscoe’s court appearance provided the opportunity to arrest him.

New Canaan police gave this account (an accusation not proven in court) of the burglary:

Some time between June 9 and 6:20 p.m. on June 10, a large rock was thrown through a window of an outside door and the door was damaged in order to gain entry to the home’s kitchen. About $8,000 in damages occurred to the house, inclluding damage to two doors and alarm components around the doors.

Just about every room in the house was ransacked. Most of the items taken were jewelry, although 15 Oxycontin pills were also missing. Among the items stolen:

• Five watches, both men’s and women’s, with a total value of $3,000
• Several pens and pencils with a total value of $3,600
• Eight brooches, mostly gold, with a total value of $6,000
• Three sets of earrings with a total value of $8,300
• Seven necklaces, including two strands of pearls, with a total value of $12,600
• Three bracelets, gold and silver, with a total value of $3,100
• Five rings with a total value of $3,000
• Cufflinks with a total value of $3,700
• A total of $2,200 in cash

None of it was ever recovered.

At 6:20 p.m., the 57-year-old man who owned the home arrived and immediately realized that the place had been burglarized.

At the time of the burglary, Ruscoe was on a work furlough while serving a sentence under the supervision of the state Department of Corrections. His address, as listed in the police report, is 76 Hartford Rd., Brooklyn, CT, the location of Brooklyn Bridge Program, which is described on its website as “a 36 bed, intensive, structured, short-term, residential substance-use work-release treatment program for adult male Department of Correction clients [...] [d]esigned to assist inmates in their return to society [...]”

A New Canaan police spokeswoman didn’t have information on what other charges initially led to Ruscoe’s court appearance Thursday, Nov. 20 in state Superior court in Norwalk.

In January 1993, Ruscoe, then a Norwalk resident, was arrested on burglary charges in Westport, according to a 1993 report in the Norwalk Hour. At the time of that arrest, he was on supervised home release as he served an 11½-year sentence for an earlier conviction.

In 2007, Ruscoe pleaded guilty in the same Norwalk court to four felony drug charges in connection with an October 2004 arrest. He was then sentenced to three years in jail and eight years of probation.