Suspect arrested for alleged burglary at a construction warehouse 

A suspect was arrested Sunday evening, May 18, for allegedly committing a burglary at a construction property on Thurston Avenue NE, the Olympia Police Department (OPD) reported. 

A witness called 911 at 8:21 p.m. on May 18 to report she and two other people found a man sleeping inside the C&H Construction warehouse in the 200 block of Thurston Avenue NE.  

She reported seeing a male with an athletic build, auburn red hair and a full beard, wearing a black jacket and sweatpants. 

Another witness said he confronted the unidentified man who claimed he was a “night watchman.”  The intruder also asserted that, “You can’t detain me.”  

The suspect, later identified as Darel Jason Mitchell in a police report, then pushed the witness to the ground, causing an injury to the inside of the left leg of the witness. 

The suspect escaped through a garage bay door and slipped between two chain-link fences before disappearing down Thurston Avenue. 

“I observed a large number of tools lying inside the bay door that the witness said was not there before. He said the tools were on shelves before and that someone must have moved them into the garage bay,” an OPD responding officer said in a report.

Authorities later located a man matching the suspect's description near the intersection of Thurston Avenue NE and Washington Street NE  approximately a block from the scene. Three witnesses positively identified Mitchell as the intruder. 

They also recovered a set of keys on the suspect, one of which unlocked the gate to the construction property. The suspect claimed the keys were his, but these were later confirmed as belonging to the C&H Construction property owner and had likely been taken from inside the warehouse. 

The suspect was arrested and booked into Thurston County Jail for first-degree burglary. The suspect was also found in violation of an Olympia downtown exclusion order.