By Tracy Ouellette
Staff Writer
A Union Grove man was surprised by an opportunist burglar Sept. 19 when he took a break while cleaning out his car.
According to the Racine County Sheriff’s Office, the victim told police he had been working in his vehicle around and took a break to go inside a little after 9 p.m. When the victim came back out, he found a man in his 20s rummaging through the victim’s car.
The victim told police he thought the suspect might be a neighbor or his and he confronted the suspect, who then attacked the victim, punching him in the face several times before running off.
According to the criminal complaint, police received a call a short time later from a woman in Union Grove reporting a man, fitting the suspect’s description, had run into her apartment on the 1400 block of Park Place.
She told police the man ignored her when she asked who he was and what he was doing in her apartment. She said he “began going through the rooms in her apartment very frantically” and at one point “lunged at her” when she again asked him why he was there.
The victim told police she was frightened by his actions and ran upstairs to wake her boyfriend with the suspect following her.
The victim said when the suspect left, she discovered there was medication missing from her medicine cabinet.
The suspect was identified later that evening by the car-robbery victim as Drew A. Gissel, 24, of Sturtevant.
The following day, the apartment-break in victim also contacted police to say she had seen Gissel enter the apartment of a neighbor. Deputies arrested Gissel at the Park Place apartment.
According to court documents, Gissel is a repeat offender with six drug and burglary convictions dating back to 2007.
Gissel is facing up to 14 years in jail and/or $45,000 in fines if convicted.
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