Davis police officers had an unusual experience Monday in which they began investigating one crime but encountered another.
It began at about 5 a.m., when someone reported that a man was pointing a laser beam at people at the Amtrak station on Second Street. The man fled the scene before officers could detain him, Lt. Ton Phan said.
While searching the downtown area for the suspect, officers stumbled upon a dumped purse that, it turned out, had just been stolen from a vehicle outside the AT&T store on F Street, Phan said.
Police eventually detained a man in the first block of E Street, but he couldn’t immediately be connected to either the burglary or the laser-pointing incident, Phan said. He was released pending further investigation, which Phan said will include checking surveillance video from neighboring businesses to see if it captured images of the burglary.
“It started out as one caper and turned out to be another,” Phan said.