Burglar Who Hit Homes Of Theatergoers Is Sent To Prison

A prolific western suburbs burglar authorities say broke into houses of people who were attending the theater was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced Monday.

David William Pollard, 47, of Prior Lake, was sentenced Friday to 110 months in prison for an Aug. 19, 2014 burglary and to 24 months for a Jan. 25, 2015 break-in. Those two sentences will be served consecutively, but at the same time as he is serving a federal sentence.

Hennepin County District Court Judge Tanya Bransford also ordered him to pay more than $30,000 in restitution to his victims, with possibly more later. As part of the plea agreement, another nine counts were dropped.

“It took a certain amount of intelligence, a certain amount of intentionality to make sure they were not home,” Judge Bransford said of the victims in a statement. “It is hoped that you can use that intelligence and cunning to do something positive instead of wreaking havoc in the community.”

From April 2012 to March 2015, authorities say Pollard committed close to 40 home burglaries in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, a large number of them in Eden Prairie and neighboring suburbs, according to a news release.

Not only was he prolific, but he developed a tactic that made it unlikely that the residents would arrive home while Pollard was in the house.

He would go to the Guthrie or the Chanhassen Dinner Theaters, record the license numbers of theatergoers and then use a public data internet service to learn the home address associated with the license plate.

He then would burglarize the home.

Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Charles Gerlach read into the record a number of victim impact statements provided by the people whose houses Pollard had burglarized.

One person mentioned a 100-year-old violin that had been handed down in the family.

Thomas Seifert spoke in court and noted that Pollard stole guns from his house, as he did in many of the break-ins.

Seifert said that Pollard sold those guns to people who could not legally purchase firearms and, therefore, was a contributor to the hundreds of people shot in Minneapolis in the years before he was captured.

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