The arrests of two juveniles on auto burglary charges last week was a major step in the city’s effort to curb property crimes, Batesville police say. One of the two has been certified to be adjudicated as an adult, and the other is being held in a youth detention center.

Deputy Chief of Police Barry Thompson hinted at the arrest of one of the two at last week’s meeting of the Mayor and Board of Aldermen. During the regular police report to aldermen, Thompson said the department had very recently made a significant arrest of a juvenile he, and other investigators, believed to be responsible for multiple break-ins.

This week, Thompson was able to verify that Tremain Dontay Vaughn, 16, of 106 Warner St., was arrested last week and has been held in the county jail since. Also arrested, in a separate case, was a juvenile that police also believe will eventually be tied to multiple burglaries, mostly of vehicles.

Vaughn, although he won’t be a legal adult until Christmas Day, 2025, has already been certified as an adult, and was on supervised probation at the time of his arrest last week. Investigators said a call about a suspicious person was responded to by officers who attempted to approach Vaughn at the scene. 

He fled, but was caught after a foot chase, and reportedly some items from a recent auto burglary were in his possession. Working backwards through dozens of old cases, police have been able to tie Vaughn to many more burglaries. 

Vaughn was sentenced to 20 years of probation last year for an aggravated assault with a weapon, and will likely face a revocation hearing in Circuit Court. Probation violators can be remanded to the Dept. of Corrections to serve all, or a portion of a sentence, in those cases.

Two days later, another juvenile was caught in the commission of a burglary, and police were also able to connect him with several others with similar details. That person has not yet been identified because his youth court records are sealed and his name does not appear in the county’s jail log from his initial processing.

Residents from all parts of Batesville have been affected by property crimes in recent years, but a sharp increase in auto burglaries several months ago had angered citizens and frustrated police. 

Residents complained about lack of patrol through neighborhoods, but police had often patrolled streets just minutes before thieves began pulling car door handles, looking to steal from the unlocked ones. 

This year in particular, police worked several cases of whole streets being hit by the burglarers, who officers believed had learned to wait until patrols had passed, or used cell phones to alert one another when patrol cars turned down a street.

Because the burglars were not breaking into locked cars and setting off alarms, the crimes were sometimes not discovered until the next morning. Sometimes, when car alarms did sound, the perpetrators would have left the scene on foot and avoided police, even if officers arrived within a couple of minutes.