Suspected Conshy Car Thief Goes Back for Seconds, Gets Nabbed

A Philadelphia man is facing felony motor vehicle theft charges after police say they caught him trying to steal two cars from the same Conshohocken home on the same night.

Hayward Smith, 18, of the 6800 block of Musgrave Street, Philadelphia, now faces a felony theft charges, along with misdemeanor counts of receiving stolen property, possession of drug paraphernalia, and criminal trespassing.

According to a report filed at the Whitemarsh Police Department, officers were first dispatched to a home on the 1500 block of Butler Pike, Conshohocken at about 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 31. There, a resident told police that his Toyota RAV4 was missing from his driveway, and discovered that his keys, along with his roommates, had gone missing from their living room table.

The resident told police that he suspected the thief might be a man he had recently met at an area Wawa, known to him only as "Slim." He further told police that he'd met Slim the previous Saturday night and invited him to "hang out" at the residence and let him stay overnight. The next evening, Slim returned and walked in through the rear door of the residence, uninvited. According to the report, the resident said he and his roommates thought it was odd, but allowed Slim to "hang out" again. In retrospect, the resident said, it did seem as though Slim was "casing" the house the second night.

About three hours later, an officer on patrol in the neighborhood spotted a running vehicle outside the residence and stopped to check it out. After pulling up behind the car, described as a white, four-door Chevrolet sedan, the vehicle began to slowly pull away and eventually disappeared up Butler Pike. At the same time, the officer observed a man matching the description of Slim walking away from a black Saturn in front of the home, the keys of which had been reported stolen earlier.

The man identified himself as Smith and admitted to going by the name Slim, and appeared to get "tense and nervous" when the officer asked him what he was doing with the keys. He responded by saying that the keys belonged to the car that had just driven away, and when the officer said that that wasn't possible if the car was running, Smith seemed to get "even more nervous," the report said.

The officer then pushed the lock button on the key ring, and identified them as belonging to the Saturn. Smith was then taken into custody and searched, at which time police found two sets of keys, one belonging to the missing RAV4, and a glass smoking pipe containing marijuana residue, the report said.

Smith is currently free on $10,000 unsecured bail and is next scheduled for a preliminary hearing with magisterial justice Deborah Lukens on Dec. 10.

According to police, a search of the license plate of the white sedan that had driven away came up as belonging to a Jeep. The report did not state whether an investigation is ongoing to obtain the identity of the driver.