Police officers arrested 17-year-old John Kosmetatos Wednesday in connection with a series of thefts of electronic equipment from Link Hall, said Detective Lt. Michael Lemm with Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety.

The arrest came after Public Safety officers responded to a report of a suspicious person in the basement of Link, he said.

Kosmetatos, who is not an SU student, faces two counts of third-degree burglary, one count of fourth-degree grand larceny, two counts petit larceny and one count of trespassing, Lemm said.

Officers believe Kosmetatos was responsible for the theft of five laptops and one video camera from that building over the past several weeks, Lemm said. Officers set up video surveillance equipment in the building to capture a photo of the thief, who they later identified as Kosmetatos.

Police managed to recover two of the stolen laptops and the video camera from a location linked to Kosmetatos, Lemm said.

Some students in the L.C. Smith School of Engineering and Computer Science may have had a late-night encounter with Kosmetatos in the sub-basement of Link Hall. Sophomore mechanical engineering major Venno Jelinek said he ran into a person fitting Kosmetatos’ description in the sub-basement’s bathroom.

‘The only people who ever come into the basement are engineers, and we all know each other,’ Jelinek said.

Published on April 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm