Suspect’S Car Keeps Showing Up At Scene

Dave Weiler knew something was wrong Wednesday morning when he looked out his office window and saw someone driving the wrong way on a one-way street.

Seated at his desk at Casne Engineering, between Argonne and Mullan roads near Broadway Avenue, Weiler watched as a half-hour crime of apparent persistence unfolded before him.

It was about 8:30 a.m. and Weiler, an electrical engineer, and office administrative assistant Cynthia Kesler were chatting in his second-story office.

The two stopped their morning coffee talk to watch a man in an older Mazda RX-7 driving north against the traffic on one-way Argonne, then pull into the parking lot that Casne Engineering shares with ITT Technical Institute and stop.

“I probably would have never noticed after that other than he left his parking lights on,” Weiler said.

Weiler said he keeps an eye out for ITT students leaving their lights and sometimes calls the college to let them know.

Weiler and Kesler watched as the man got out of his RX-7, then walked over to a similar car in the parking lot and got in.

He emerged carrying a CD player with wires dangling from it and a 2-1/2-foot subwoofer.

“We instantly looked at each other and said, ‘That’s not his,”’ Kesler said.

Weiler pulled out binoculars stashed in his desk for field work and wrote down the man’s license plate number.

Then Weiler ran down to the parking lot to see what was happening.

Meanwhile, Kesler called the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department to report the crime.

But by the time Weiler made it to the parking lot, the thief had hopped back into his car and headed north on Mullan.

Minutes later, however, the RX-7 pulled back into the parking lot. “I said, ‘Oh my God, he’s back,”’ Kesler recalls.

The driver got out, went back to the same car and took a black duffel bag containing CDs and tapes.

Weiler ran back down to the parking lot trying to get a better description.

“I still wasn’t convinced we had the right license plate number,” he said. It turns out they did.

The man drove away, then the car returned again.

This time, sheriff’s deputies were there, having responded to Kesler’s call. They arrested Paul A. Sublet of 4274 N. Nevada. He was booked on second-degree theft.

“It gives you reassurance that people are watching out for stuff,” said Chris Mackey, the ITT electronics engineering student whose car had been entered. All of his car stereo gear was returned to him on the spot.

Mackey said the thief apparently used the key to the similar car to unlock Mackey’s car.

Weiler and Mackey both said they’re not sure an arrest would have been made, or the car stereo equipment recovered, had the suspect’s car not kept coming back.

“It’s just dumb,” Weiler said.