The Grinch Who Stole Christmas Wreaths, License Plates and Diamond Rings: Police

The following items were taken from the Downers Grove Police Department's weekly report. As a reminder, an arrest doesn't constitute a finding of guilt.

Stolen Christmas wreath

A Downers Grove resident living on Valley View Drive was taken by surprise the morning of Nov. 24 when he walked outside to find his Christmas wreath stolen.

Police were called to the scene around 11 a.m. the day before Thanksgiving, and the man said the theft had to have occurred sometime between 7 p.m. Nov. 23 and 10:30 a.m. Nov. 24.

Police searched the area for possible suspects but didn’t find anything.

The wreath, adorned with LED lights, was hanging at the top of his garage. His total loss was $30. No further action is expected to be taken.

License plate theft

A resident reported Nov. 25 that a rear license had been stolen off of his van during the night, Downers Grove police reported.

The man, who walked into the station to report the crime, said his family owns a company and that it was the company van that had been burglarized. He said that on Nov. 23, he parked the van outside of the business, and the next day at 8 a.m. the license plate was missing.

The resident said he thought the thief took the plate for its registration sticker, because the other company van — on which they’d cut an ‘X’ on the sticker so it couldn’t be removed — was untouched.

Shoplifting

Grigorii Cercel, 25, was arrested Nov. 26 for shoplifting a watch form the TJ Maxx on Lemont Road. A security officer watched while Cercel slipped the store anti-theft sensor off of the $50 men’s Freestyle Precision 2.0 watch in the jewelry section and place it in his front pocket while he walked through the store.

Cercel paid for clothes at the cash register but didn’t attempt to pay for the watch, at which point he was stopped and arrested.

Missing engagement ring

A woman reported Nov. 22 an incident that had taken place almost a full year earlier — on Jan. 1 of this year, she said, she’d been changing in the locker room of X-Sport Fitness when she took off her platinum and diamond engagement ring and put it in her purse on a bench. She said she didn’t notice the ring was missing until she was at home later that evening.

The resident said she’d looked for the ring many times without any results. She thinks the ring was stolen from her purse while she was changing.

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