20-year-old arrested for car burglaries

A 20-year-old Mandeville man was arrested Thursday morning, 14 hours after he allegedly started a six-car, $5,000-robbery spree in Covington, police said.

Groggy and “reeking of marijuana,” John Bradley Culpepper, 20, 2547 Lakeshore Drive, was arrested about 10 a.m. Friday as he left a friend’s apartment complex in the River Forest Subdivision near Covington High School and headed for his SUV, Covington Police spokesman Jack West said.

For three hours, Covington’s street crime unit, sitting in unmarked police cars, had staked out the SUV, a 2001 Isuzu Trooper, after a witness noticed a white SUV peel away at the scene of one robbery the night before, West said.

When the witness called authorities a little after 10 p.m. Wednesday night, Covington police flooded the area in search of a white SUV. They found only one — Culpepper’s — and waited for the driver to emerge.

“That’s what you call a good old fashion stake out,” West said.

When Culpepper did emerge, officers approached him and were “immediately alerted by the strong smell of marijuana,” West said.

Officers found a small amount of marijuana on Culpepper and a little inside the SUV stuffed in a pipe.

When questioned, he was “cocky, rather cocky,” West said, and at first he denied all of the robberies.

His stash of goods said otherwise.

Inside the SUV, officers found, among other items, two DVD/TV players, six cell phones, eight pair of designer sunglasses, five watches and two kids’ backpacks he stole and emptied out to carry all his booty, West said. Two GPS systems were also stolen, with one already hooked up on his dashboard, West said.

Culpepper later confessed to all six burglaries, including one where he supposedly broke into an unlocked garage and robbed the car, West said.

Inside the vehicle, police also found bolt cutters, a knit hat, several pairs or robber gloves, a hatchet and a baseball bat, West said.

Authorities are looking into whether Culpepper is also responsible for a string of burglaries in the Mandeville area.

Culpepper was booked into St. Tammany Parish Jail on five counts of vehicular burglary, one count of burglary of an inhabited dwelling because he broke in a garage, one count of marijuana possession and one count of drug paraphernalia possession.

Culpepper, originally from Texas, moved in with his mom at the Mandeville Lakefront about a month ago.

He has no prior criminal history, West said.