By Maria Rocha-Buschel
A cleaning company employee has been arrested for allegedly burglarizing an office he had access to through his job, police said. Christian Holmes, 25, was arrested on Tuesday, February 27 for reportedly stealing laptops from an office at 122 West 26th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues last December.
Police said that video surveillance showed two individuals wearing hoods, masks and gloves entering the lobby of the building at 3 a.m. on December 12, 2017 using an access key card and allegedly entered the offices of Skipper, a company on the 11th floor of the building, using an office key. When the two individuals got back on the elevator on the 11th floor at 4:13 a.m., they were allegedly carrying full bags that were previously empty.
The DA’s office said that the face of the individual who used the elevator access card and key was partially visible on the surveillance video when the two were getting into the elevator and another employee for the cleaning company identified the person as Holmes.
A manager for the cleaning company told the district attorney’s office that the company services the offices of Skipper and that the clothing worn by one of the individuals seen in the video surveillance is issued by the company, but she said that no one from the company was assigned to clean Skipper’s offices that night and no employee had been authorized to enter the building then.
The manager confirmed that Holmes was an employee for the cleaning company and had access to keys and entry information for various buildings and offices that are serviced by the company.
The manager also told the DA’s office that the cleaning company uses GPS-linked software to track employees who have signed in to work overnight and that while the GPS showed Holmes as checked in at his designated work location in Brooklyn that night, it also indicated that he was in the immediate vicinity of the West 26th Street building around the time he can allegedly be seen on the surveillance video.
Employees for Skipper had noticed the following day that the offices had been broken into and notified police when they saw that various electronics, including computers, had been stolen.
Holmes was charged with burglary. The second individual has not been arrested. An attorney for Holmes did not respond to a request for comment.