Three charged in Geekxilla store burglary

BREWER – Investigators have charged two men and a juvenile in connection with last week’s break-in at the Geekxilla gaming store, where an estimated $7,000 in game consoles and games were taken.

Michael Perkins, 19, of Bangor, Joshua Mackin, 20, of Brewer and a 17-year-old boy from Clifton all were charged Monday night with felony burglary and theft, Detective Sgt. Jay Munson of the Brewer Police Department said Tuesday.

Perkins and the Clifton teenager also were charged with unauthorized use of property and criminal mischief after police connected them to two ATVs reported stolen from Orrington days earlier.

Most of the items stolen from Geekxilla – about 80 percent – have been recovered, Munson said.

The three are associates and were known to hang around Geekxilla, a North Main Street store that sells gaming consoles such as the Xbox 360 and has space in-store for the games to be played.

The store was broken into between the night of Aug. 31 and the next morning when the store opened. Six Xbox 360 gaming systems, worth about $500 each, were among the items taken Munson said. Also taken were about 200 games, including for the Playstation 2 system.

Investigators quickly focused on the three, the Brewer detective said.

“We had information that they were involved from the start,” Munson said, acknowledging that initially they had no hard evidence to link them to the crime.

That changed Monday night when police received information that some of the stolen items could be found at a Holyoke Street residence of an acquaintance of the suspects.

Brewer police officers recovered some items from the residence and tracked down other items that had been given away, traded or sold, including to a store at the Bangor Mall, Munson said. Police also contacted people who had received or bought the stolen items and had them return the consoles and games, Munson said.

The two ATVs recovered had been taken from Kelly’s Sport Shop in Orrington late last Friday or early Saturday morning, Deputy Doug Smith of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

Perkins and the Clifton teenager spray-painted the ATVs and the teenager broke the ignition on one and used a screwdriver to start it in order to take it away, Smith said.

The Geekxilla theft prompted the temporary closure of the Brewer store, but even without the half-dozen missing Xbox 360 systems to use in-store, Geekxilla reopened by midafternoon for customers. Gamers threw their support behind the store and brought in their own games and gaming consoles to help out.