Two men arrested after burglary video goes viral
Two men linked to at least two burglaries caught on video, including one that went viral on Facebook and received more than 1 million views, were jailed this month, according to a Las Vegas police arrest report.
Arron Lair, 32, and Michael Waters, 27, were arrested Dec. 2 in a North Las Vegas home, police said. They are being housed at the Clark County Detention Center and are facing burglary and home invasion charges.
One of the burglaries, on Nov. 10, was thwarted when the victim got an alert on his cellphone warning him that someone was in his house. He called his neighbor, an Air Force veteran, to check on his Summerlin home, the man told the Review-Journal.
The neighbor, whom the arrest report said was armed with a gun, grabbed his cellphone and started recording. In the video, four men were seen running from the home and piling into a white SUV with no license plates.
The burglars had kicked in the front door and stacked possessions at the front door, but were caught by the neighbor before they could take any of them, police said.
The neighbor engaged the driver, later identified by police as Lair, and asked what he was doing. The driver responded, "It's my homeboys house." The driver got out of the GMC Yukon and confronted the neighbor about the SUV's keys while a man who covered his face with a "garment" ran toward the vehicle, police said. The Yukon sped away.
Police weren't immediately able to locate the Yukon or the burglars. The homeowners uploaded the video, which accumulated more than a million views in a few days, to Facebook.
An investigation determined that the day before, another burglary also has been caught on tape, police said. One of three men is heard saying "Metro Police Department" as two of the men entered the home.
A third man, whom police allege is Lair, because the "physical description matches closely, if not identical" to the man seen driving the Yukon in the other burglary, is heard giving orders. The burglars are accused of taking a television and "a bag of change."
When the video of the burglaries gained traction on Facebook and on news media, Henderson police contacted Metro regarding other break-ins caught on video to which they allege Lair is connected. An anonymous tip led police to a home where police had found a Yukon resembling the one in the video. Police arrested Lair and Waters on Dec. 2, according to the report.
Lair did not want to talk to detectives, but Waters did, and told them he was the man seen in one of the videos and also identified Lair as being there, police said.
Court records show Lair has an extensive criminal history that dates back to 2009. His name is linked to six burglary cases.
Information on further arrests linked to the two burglaries caught on video was not immediately available.
Both men are scheduled to appear in court Dec. 21.
— Contact Ricardo Torres at rtorres@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0381. Follow him: @rickytwrites
