Bellevue police caught the suspects believed to be responsible for burglarizing former Seahawks player Marcus Trufant’s Bellevue home.
According to Bellevue police Major John McCracken, Trufant and his family awoke at around 6 a.m. Feb. 5 to find their front door standing open and two of their vehicles, along with their keys, stolen. Credit cards, a purse and a gold ring were also missing.
The family believes the burglar came in the night between 1-2 a.m. as Trufant, his wife and their five children were asleep.
Trufant called police and reported his Mercedes-Benz G-Class SUV and Porsche Sedan as stolen. Once the vehicles were reported stolen, police were then able to access their locations using a low jack satellite locating system equipped on both cars.
Using the locating system, officers found the Mercedes in south Bellevue, not too far from Downtown. The license plate of the Mercedes had already been switched. The Porsche was in Bothell.
McCracken said officers in the Special Operations unit “sat on the vehicles all day” Monday until a juvenile male between 15-17 years old returned to the Mercedes and used its key fob. They followed the suspect to Bothell, where the other car was located. But, by that time, the Porsche had been disabled so the suspects couldn’t drive it.
The suspect would then go on to pick up two more male juveniles and an adult before police arrested them all in Kenmore, where they were trying to pawn the gold ring stolen from Trufant’s home.
After the suspects’ arrest, McCracken said officers recovered both of the vehicles’ key fobs, and the gold ring. The purse and at least one of the credit cards is still outstanding, however.
McCracken said the Special Operations unit did an outstanding job, as usual, and were proactive during the “quiet” operation that took place over several hours.
Trufant played for the Seattle Seahawks from 2003-2012 and later the Jacksonville Jaguars before retiring as a Seahawk in 2014 after signing a one-day contract.