One of the three men accused of burglarizing a Ridgefield house had driven from Texas to Vancouver to visit a friend a day prior to the alleged crime.
Jean Carlos Bachemolina, 31, told investigators that he had only been in Vancouver for one night when he, Edgar Bulles Torres, 43, and Omar R. Ortega, 35, both of Monroe, La., went out driving around in a van at about 2:45 a.m. Thursday, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case.
Ortega, who was driving, stopped at a dark house in Ridgefield, 2021 S. Osprey Drive, and he stayed in the car while Torres and Bachemolina pushed on a glass door, broke it and went inside, the affidavit states.
They didn’t think anyone was inside the house, but Bachemolina found a 31-year-old woman hiding in an upstairs bedroom closet, according to the court document.
The woman had called 911 and was talking with a dispatcher, who reportedly heard “a female scream, the sound of a struggle and then the line went dead,” the affidavit states.
Ridgefield police said in a press release that the suspects took and broke the woman’s phone.
Bachemolina, however, denied touching the woman’s cellphone and denied knowing anything about the phone being broken, the court records state.
The three men got back into the van and fled, leading to a police pursuit that ended a few miles away when the van stopped abruptly in the middle of the street and all three men bailed from the vehicle, the affidavit states.
A sheriff’s deputy responding to the area located Ortega, police said. A short time later, Torres and Bachemolina were located by police dogs who tracked them to an area of thick vegetation, where they were hiding, according to court records.
When he was interviewed, Bachemolina said that “he needs money for his mother who needs chemotherapy in Puerto Rico,” the affidavit states.
All three men appeared Friday in Clark County Superior Court on suspicion of first-degree burglary. Ortega also appeared on suspicion of attempting to elude police. Their bail was set at $125,000, and they are scheduled to be arraigned April 12.
