By Riley Morningstar
Courtesy The Journal
rmorningstar@upstatetoday.com

CLEMSON — Five minors were charged with second-degree burglary in June after a string of thefts at Clemson University’s Doug Kingsmore Stadium and Soccer Operations Complex.

Clemson University Police Chief Greg Mullen confirmed the juveniles were charged with the non-violent offense earlier this week after The Journal received a completed open records request from the school.

The department first announced in March a group of people burglarized the $8 million soccer facility that opened in 2020 and stole more than $2,000 worth of property in mid-February.

One incident report provided showed police were called to the baseball stadium on Feb. 14 when chief of staff Brad Owens said six players reported nine items missing from their lockers — which included five pairs of Oakley sunglasses, a baseball glove and two university jerseys. Owens provided an entry log that showed between 12:43-12:49 a.m. on Feb. 14 the door to the dugout opened. It was used again to access the door at 3:09 a.m., the report added, with a generic key fob belonging to a contract cleaner.

On Feb. 17, a soccer operations employee called police to report some players noticed shoes and other gear was missing, but thought it was a prank. A report said players started to report other missing items and officials recovered footage of two people “wearing hoodies and masks” breaking in through the front door through “manipulating the lock with some small device.” Minutes later, close to midnight on Feb. 14, three others showed up with masks and hoodies.

In total, eight pairs of soccer cleats valued at $270 each, a bottle of cologne and a purple puffer jacket were stolen. Officers noted after both initial investigations there wasn’t enough evidence to move forward on identifying suspects.

MAY RUN IN

After midnight on May 22, an officer was driving near the soccer practice facility and saw someone “crouched down” behind construction equipment. Three people wearing backpacks and sweatshirts took off into the woods, a report said, but the officer did not find them. Security camera showed five people again going into the soccer facility while another officer saw a car parked in the gravel lot along S.C. Highway 93 on the Pickens County side of the bridge at Lake Hartwell that still had a warm engine. The officer noted the license tag of the vehicle. Some 40 minutes later, the car was gone. There were no items reported missing, but the break-in happened while the men’s soccer team was in Italy, the report said.

On May 23, police reported senior associate athletic director Eric Sabin showed coaches and support staff a photo of the suspects. More than three lines of information are then redacted in the report, which leads to the blacked-out names of five possible suspects.

Police subsequently started to pull state driver records and then contacted the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office for help identifying the suspects.

ADMISSION?

On May 25, a university detective logged that a father of one of the suspects said “all of the parents” talked with the minors and “all of the juveniles involved have admitted to being the ones who committed to the crime.” The father told police everyone was willing to meet with police and offer written statements and return the stolen property.

In an interview on June 1, a report said one of the suspects found a key in the lock of a door to a storage area near the soccer complex and used that to get into the facility. The four other minors generally admitted the same to police in interviews with parents present, a detective wrote. There was a discrepancy with two of the five charged saying they were not at the first round of thefts.

Each of the five minors were “thanked for their time and honesty” before being released to their parents and will now be prosecuted in Pickens County Family Court, the report said.