NJ homeowner finds burglar wanted in spree, munching chips in bedroom

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, N.J. (WABC) -- Police say one man is responsible for 10 home break-ins, three car burglaries, and one stolen car in a bizarre crime spree in New Jersey.

All that felonious debauchery happened in just one night.

Police in South Brunswick have been looking for him for nearly a month, and now they say they've got him.

At 12:24 a.m. all was quiet in the Abouele house.

That was until a strange series of noises woke 19-year-old Abdallah's uncle, who called out, thinking a family member just walked in.

"He called his name again and again. He just said, 'uh huh', just to make it sound like it was my older brother," said Abdallah Abouele, the burglary victim.

But it wasn't. Instead in the doorway to the bedroom, silhouetted against a nightlight, the intruder was staring at him, as if in a trance munching on chips.

"The robber said 'everything's ok' and the just left," Abouele said.

And then the man took his chips and ran out the family's front door. That's when they called the cops.

"To us, this is very odd," said Det. Dennis Yuhasz, of the South Brunswick Police Department.

Especially so because South Brunswick Police were already in the area that early morning last month searching, they say, for this man. Police say in the span of an hour and a half he allegedly broke into 10 homes, many of them occupied.

"It's very rare to get occupied burglaries in the middle of the night, 1o'clock in the morning," Yuhasz said. "And he continued to go from house to house to house to house."

Detective Yuhasz says Obrian Rosario Deleon came face to face with his victims at least three times during the one man burglary spree. In the process, he allegedly stole electronics and ultimately someone's car.

But he left plenty of evidence behind. And in the end, it was a fingerprint that led cops to Deleon who's now charged with more than a dozen counts of burglary.

Police say he's confessed to everything, though he never quite explained his penchant for potato chips.

"I guess he was drunk, case of munchies or something," Abouele said.

He is being held in Middlesex County Correction Center on $20,000 bail.