Charges In Racine Brewery Break-In After DNA Found On Fork: Complaint

MOUNT PLEASANT, WI — A Racine man has been accused of being involved in a November 2021 burglary of a Mount Pleasant brewery.

Mount Pleasant Police say in a criminal complaint they tracked him down through DNA evidence they believe he left on a fork at the crime scene when he took food from the brewery's fridge.

Police were sent to 1 of Us Brewing on the 8100 block of Washington Avenue in Mount Pleasant on Nov. 3, 2021, where the business owner told police he found a rock smashed through a glass door. The owner told police the business' safe had been emptied of checks, and 19 kegs and at least three cases of beer were missing from inventory, according to the complaint.

Kawakte Francis, 42, was charged in Racine County Court on Monday with burglary, theft, and criminal damage to property in connection with the burglary, the complaint and online records show.

Another man police believe to be involved in the burglary has not been found, according to the criminal complaint, and a third has not been identified.

After the break-in, the brewery owner said they found the fork and a bowl left out, and told police it seemed to have been taken out of a fridge during the burglary, the complaint says. Police swabbed it for fingerprints and DNA, according to the criminal complaint.

A report from the Wisconsin State Crime Lab came back on March 17 with a hit on the DNA sample taken from the fork, the complaint says. Police say the DNA traced back to Francis. When police confronted Francis, he told them he was aware of the burglary but denied being involved and provided an alibi that could not be verified, the complaint says.

During an interview, Francis told police he thought his name may have come up during the investigation because of news reports of people trying to get others to sign checks, the complaint says.

Stolen Checks, Another Suspect Remains At Large

Some of the stolen checks were cashed after the burglary, the complaint says, and The Journal Times reported in December at least one person was charged in connection with checks from the brewery.

One unidentified woman accused of cashing some of those checks told police she was trapped into it, the complaint says. She told police that on the day of the break-in, a car with three people inside approached her and someone asked her if she wanted to make some money, the complaint said.

The woman told police the men inside the car took her to a store, filled out the checks for her, and had her go inside to cash them, the complaint says. She told police that when she was in the car, she saw three cases of beer, which police note in the complaint had packaging very similar to that of the stolen beer.

The woman told police one of the men in the car, who police have yet been unable to find, told her he and some friends stole "a bunch of beer...cases and cases of beer," the complaint says.

The woman also told police that she saw the man who has not yet been located by police on the morning of Nov. 3 unloading several kegs into a shed on a property in Racine, the complaint says.

When police visited the property in February they were unable to get in touch with the other man accused in the burglary, the complaint says. They spoke to his father, who also lived on the property, and got permission to search the shed, according to the complaint.

Police discovered two unopened cans of beer from the brewery in the shed, the complaint says.

Editor's note: This article was updated after one line incorrectly reported the date of the burglary.