Burglar Found Crushed By Safe

When Dave Sloop walked Thursday morning into the Long Island real estate and insurance office where he works, he spotted the burglar immediately.

He was the one dead at the bottom of the stairs. The one crushed underneath the office safe, covered from his neck to his knees.

“I just kind of looked and said, ‘My God … something went wrong last night.”’

Police said the man was a burglar who apparently had tried to steal the safe and was crushed to death by the 500- to 600-pound box while moving it from the second to the first floor of the building.

The burglar, who police tentatively identified as Salomon Garcia, 22, apparently lost control of the 2-foot-wide by 4-foot-high safe while moving it down the flight of stairs of an emergency exit in the two-story building, said Detective Lt. John Gierasch, commander of the Suffolk Homicide Squad.