Overview
- Police arrested 29-year-old Jason Lionel Wayne Gatrell on Tuesday and the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged him with six counts tied to the Aug. 16 burglary of The Gnome and an Aug. 17 attempted burglary at The Lexington.
- Officers say Gatrell was caught in the act at The Lexington, sprayed an officer with pepper spray and tried to disarm an officer during the arrest before additional officers took him into custody.
- Surveillance footage from The Gnome shows two people breaking in just after 4 a.m. on Aug. 16, carrying out an office safe and using a saw on another safe, with the owner reporting about $1,300 stolen and thousands of dollars in damage.
- The Gnome’s owner, Brian Ingram, says the pub has been broken into more than a dozen times over five years despite security upgrades and he is pressing for harsher penalties after at least one earlier case was dismissed for mental competency reasons.
- The arrest relied on matching clothing and a shoeprint from the Lexington scene to Gatrell and could lead to renewed scrutiny of how repeated commercial burglaries are investigated and prosecuted in Ramsey County.