Police: Pittsburgh man caught stealing items from unlocked cars in Buffalo Township

A Pittsburgh man suspected of rifling through unlocked cars early Monday was arrested as he drove from the scene, Buffalo Township police said Wednesday.

At about 3:15 a.m. Monday, Patrolman John Gillette said spotted a figure in dark clothes going through items in a black Nissan sedan that was parked in front of the owner’s house along the 100 block of Pasture Crossing.

When the dark-clothed figure started to run away through yards, Gillette went looking for him.

About five minutes later, Gillette noticed a black Chrysler parked at intersection of Pasture Crossing and Cabin Lane. Gillette said in an arrest report that the Chrysler was new in the neighborhood and wasn’t there when he starting to patrol there at about 1 a.m.

According to the report, the Chrysler driver didn’t pull the car over when Gillette turned on his police lights, but when Gillette saw that the driver’s window was open, he yelled at the driver to stop.

Police say Frankie Leon Morrison, 53, of Pittsburgh’s Garfield section, got out of the car as instructed. Gillette wrote in his report that Morrison was “dripping with sweat from his head … and had muddy shoes and pants as though he had just ran through several yards of wet grass.”

Gillette reported that there was an unzipped backpack on the front seat. He said it contained money, jewelry, a loaded pistol magazine, gift or gas cards and a wallet with a driver’s license that wasn’t Morrison’s.

When contacted by police, the license holder said he had left his wallet in his car, the black Nissan, parked outside his house.

Morrison told police he was a “jitney driver” and had dropped off two younger men in the neighborhood but he “did not know where they lived.”

Morrison is charged with theft, receiving stolen property and prowling at night.

“There could be additional charges,” Police Chief Timothy Derringer said. “We got a search warrant for the car,” he said.

Derringer said more than a dozen cars were illegally entered Sunday and Monday. Two pistols, both Glocks, were taken, but Morrison was charged with breaking into two of them as of Wednesday.

Morrison’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 24 in front of Saxonburg District Judge Sue Haggerty.