A man police suspect of stealing five bicycles valued between $2,250 and $12,500 was arrested on campus July 24.
UNMPD said Charles Gutierrez has been sawing through protective chains and cables to steal bicycles and pawn them for at least two years. Gutierrez is charged with seven counts of larceny.
Senior Rikk Murphy helped police catch Gutierrez in December after Murphy’s bicycle was stolen.
“I was coming back from a class at the business center and I was walking past Zimmerman Library,” Murphy said. “I saw some guy standing there with the bicycles, pulling one out, and I thought at first, ‘Oh, this guy’s got the same kind of bicycle horn that I do.’ Then it dawned on me. I was like, ‘No, that’s my bike.’”
Murphy said he chased the thief as far as he could but never caught up with him. He called UNM police and said that he saw the thief set down a coffee cup before taking the bike.
“At some point I mentioned to the officer that the thief left his coffee cup down there and he got all excited,” Murphy said. “I said ‘Oh yeah, it’s still down by the bike rack.’”
Murphy said the officer collected the cup but he never heard back from the UNMPD about his bike.
UNMPD Detective Ronnie Rushing said the department sent the cup to state lab analysts to get a DNA profile.
“This whole process takes some time — it’s not like on television where you can get it done in 30 minutes or an hour,” Rushing said. “It takes weeks if not months.”
Rushing said UNMPD received a tip from another UNM bike theft victim who saw his bike online, offered for sale on eBay by Albuquerque’s Valley Pawn Shop. Rushing said UNMPD used information from Valley Pawn and DNA from the coffee cup to pinpoint Gutierrez.
“When our detectives went to the Valley Pawn Shop, they were able to tell us that Charles Gutierrez was a customer there and sold several bicycles to them,” Rushing said.
He said UNMPD was able to recover five bikes from Valley Pawn and return them to students. All of the bikes recovered were valued between $450 and $2,500.
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“This man was stealing expensive bicycles,” Rushing said. “He had an eye for it.”
Rushing said students should get the strongest bike locks they can find and write down the brand, name and serial number of their bike in case of theft.
“I’ve had many people come in and say ‘Yeah, my bicycle was pink,’ but they don’t even know the brand of it,” Rushing said. “We can’t help much in those cases.”
Rushing said one of the best ways students can make sure their bikes are returned to them is to get their names and phone numbers engraved on their bikes. The service is available for free at the UNMPD station. Rushing said he returned a bicycle earlier this year because a student had his phone number engraved on it.
UNM biology major Shauna Sulima said she was unaware of the engraving service, but will take advantage of it, since her bike is her main form of transportation.
“My bike gets me to school, work and home, so if it was stolen I guess I’d just have to start walking everywhere,” she said.
Sulima said she usually doesn’t worry about campus bike theft unless it is late at night. She said she plans to be more cautious in the future because of Murphy’s story.
“Right now I just use a cable lock that I picked up at a bike shop on Central,” Sulima said. “They told me it would protect my bike the best.”
Murphy said Gutierrez was able to cut through his cable lock and steal his bike.
Murphy was not among the students who got their bikes back. He said he had to walk and take the bus to school and work until he got a replacement bike in June.
