LEE’S SUMMIT, MO (KCTV) — As if teachers aren’t having a hard enough time these days, a thief is targeting school parking lots in Missouri and traveling the nation to do it. Local law enforcement has identified three teachers victimized and want to hear from any school staff who have recently had their cars broken into and their purses or wallets stolen.
“It’s deplorable,” said Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Bill Lowe. “Teachers have been through a tremendous amount the last two years, and of all people to be preying upon, it’s pretty despicable.”
The case came together when troopers pulled over a man on I-70 in Lafayette County at about 1 p.m. Tuesday for a traffic violation. Lowe said the trooper discovered the driver had a felony warrant out of Nebraska for “unauthorized use of a vehicle,” and the trooper’s subsequent search of the car raised suspicion.
“He saw a lot of receipts, a lot of gift cards. There was a wallet in the vehicle that didn’t belong to him,” Lowe explained.
The gift cards have serial numbers that can be traced to the credit card used to buy them. Lowe said the first few they traced all came back to teachers whose cars had been broken into at school. Those thefts happened in Savannah, Missouri, Pleasant Hill, Missouri, and a city in Minnesota.
On Wednesday, the MSHP posted about the crimes on Twitter. In a matter of hours, they heard from a teacher in Excelsior Springs, another in Lee’s Summit, and from the Iowa State Patrol, whose officers said several teachers in that state had been hit.
Investigators have not yet determined if the specific crimes they just heard about are connected to the same man, but they have reason to believe there are far more victims than the three they have connected with certainty so far.
“There were 27 other gift cards in there, so having that many gift cards, there’s got to be other victims associated with him,” Lowe asserted.
59-year-old Aloysius Schrom, of Minnesota, is currently charged in Lafayette County, Missouri with one count each of felony and misdemeanor stealing. Online Minnesota court records show he was convicted there in 2019 for fraudulent use of a “financial transaction card.” The Minnesota Department of Corrections website shows he was placed on post-release supervision on December 27, 2021 which was to continue until March 25, 2023.
The MSHP wants to hear from anyone who’s had a car broken into at school recently.
“We want to make sure that we’re diligent in finding every victim that we can and connect the dots,” Lowe said.
You can contact an investigator by calling 816-622-0800 and asking for Cpl. Beau Ryan.
As more evidence is collected, more charges could come from other counties and other states.
As for why schools were the target, Lowe said it appeared to be just a crime of opportunity: a big parking lot where everyone is inside at certain times of the day.
