Deputies say they caught San Marcos burglar

After officers witnessed a young man leap from a second-story window of a San Marcos home this summer, deputy Jason Allen asked him what he was doing. “He said, ‘Uh, breaking and entering?’” The deputy recalled the moment for a judge in court on December 2.

The hearing was for Steven Donald Forsyth, 23, who was arrested on July 10 in the Via Vera Cruz neighborhood; he was later charged with burglary and grand theft. Deputy Allen said that cash and more than $13,000 in stolen savings bonds were found on Forsyth when he was arrested.

The defendant was allegedly connected to another burglary, in Carmel Valley, when an investigator ran his name through a database of pawn-shop transactions. It was March 16 when Forsyth pawned an unusual sapphire-encrusted Rolex, and the accused man left his thumbprint on the pawn receipt, according to testimony.

A woman testified that the glittery $5000 watch she had purchased from a Tourneau store was stolen from her home on Torrey View Court on March 13 of this year. The woman expressed dismay that the owner of the pawn shop wants her to pay $1400 to recover her own watch.

“It’s still there,” she sighed.

Forsyth pleaded not guilty to four felonies and is next due in San Diego’s North County courthouse on January 15.