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Alexander E. Manigat, 42, of Brooklyn, was arrested by Nassau County police last month in connection with a jewelry store burglary there, Wyckoff Police Lt. Joseph Soto said on Friday, June 2.
Manigat quickly became a suspect in a 3:30 a.m. break-in at Hartger’s Jewelers on Wyckoff Avenue in Wyckoff on March 4, authorities said.
Security cameras show one prowler entering Hartger’s by climbing a ladder and breaking a window while an apparent lookout kept watch for police.
Officer Kyle Scherm, responding to a burglar alarm, found the broken window with the ladder beneath it, Soto said.
The Bergen County Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Identification collected evidence after officers found no one inside, the lieutenant said. Although the amount of loss wasn’t disclosed, Soto said several items of jewelry and watches were taken.
Wyckoff Detective Sgt. Michael DeMaio and Detective Sgt. Michael Ragucci worked with their colleagues in Nassau County and elsewhere to identify Manigat, among other suspects.
Manigat has long been known to police.
He'd already spent several years in prison in connection with various burglaries – and had only just been arrested and released for another one three weeks earlier -- when he broke into the home of a retired guidance counselor in Brooklyn in 2010.
Manigat pointed a starter pistol at the 62-year-old homeowner, who grabbed a legally registered .38-caliber revolver and shot at him and an accomplice in a hallway, which authorities at the time said as within his rights as a New York State citizen.
Manigat was hit three times and grazed once, police said. His partner scampered off.
Manigat took a plea deal from prosecutors and ended up serving six years in state prison in New York. He was paroled in 2018, New York Department of Corrections records show.
Manigat had come to the U.S. from Haiti with his family when he was 4, according to his mother. He was stabbed five times in his early 20s, she said.
Manigat currently remains held on Long Island pending extradition to New Jersey to face charges of burglary, theft, criminal mischief and possession of burglary tools in connection with the Hartger’s break-in.
Late last year, three burglars smashed their way into Devon Fine Jewelry in the Wyckoff Square shopping center barely a half-mile down the road from Hartgers.
Those intruders cleared broken glass from the front of the shop, loaded a plastic trash can with jewelry and fled, security images released by police showed.
SEE: SMASH BURGLARS: Photos Show Destructive Wyckoff Jewelry Thieves At Work
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