NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A Staten Island man was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison for a string of residential burglaries of empty Brooklyn apartments in 2018.
Casey Knight, 53, pled guilty to three counts of third-degree burglary earlier this month. He was sentenced Tuesday to three consecutive prison terms of two to four years, for a total of six to 12 years.
According to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, Knight broke into three different residences in various neighborhoods across Brooklyn between Oct. 24, 2018 and Nov. 4, 2018.
In the first incident, the victim returned to Sudyam Street home in Bushwick and found Knight fleeing the home from a cellar door. When he entered the home, he found that two laptops were missing.
Knight struck again at an apartment on Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Oct. 26. During that burglary, the victim was alerted that the alarm at her home had been activated while she was out.
When she returned home, she found about $13,000 worth of jewelry was missing from her roommate's bedroom.
The third burglary happened sometime between Oct. 31, 2018 and Nov. 4, 2018 at a Clifton Place apartment in Clinton Hill. That victim told authorities he had left for vacation and returned home to find various electronics, a bicycle and a guitar missing.
Knight was identified as the suspect in all three burglaries from surveillance footage from the first two burglaries and from fingerprints at the third.
"This defendant is a serial burglar who has shown that he will continue to invade the sanctity of people's homes if he remains at large, necessitating this prison sentence," Gonzalez said in a statement. "My Office is committed to protecting the safety and property of everyone living in Brooklyn and will continue to prosecute those who victimize our neighbors."
