Ottawa pair nabbed for Delphos burglary

DELPHOS — In a strange twist, law enforcement officials investigating what they later determined to be a false abduction report have charged the two Ottawa residents who filed the report in connection with a string of area burglaries.

Logan Weis and Brittany Bermudez, both 21, are being held in the Putnam County Jail on receiving stolen property charges in connection with stolen/forged checks taken in a recent Delphos Burglary.

A Delphos police investigation into a home burglary in the 1200 block of Park Avenue in Delphos reported on February 14 led investigators into Putnam County late Monday morning.

Pandora Police Chief Scott Stant discovered that checks belonging to a burglary victim in Delphos had surfaced at a local market in Pandora over this past weekend. His investigation led to Weis and Bermudez as suspects in the burglary.

Delphos Police, working in conjunction with Pandora and Ottawa Police and the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, led investigators to execute a search warrant at the home of the two suspects at 1271 N. Defiance St. in Ottawa at 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon. There was no one inside the home at the time of the warrant.

Meanwhile, during that investigation, officers were contacted by detectives from the Allen County Sheriff’s Department in Lima, who indicated that Weis was presently being treated for a non-life threatening gunshot wound at a local hospital.

Weis and Bermudez had reported that an unknown assailant attempted to abduct Bermudez from her parked vehicle in the Allen County area, and when Weis tried to stop the abduction, he was shot by the person.

Allen County detectives determined the reported abduction was a hoax and also that the minor gunshot wound had been self-inflicted.  The hoax was apparently perpetrated in an attempt to prevent or delay Weis from going to jail on a probation violation during a hearing to be held Monday afternoon in Putnam County Municipal Court.

Weis was treated and released from the hospital a short time later and both he and Bermudez were detained at the Allen County Jail and later transferred to the Putnam County Jail on felony warrants issued earlier in the day related to the recovered stolen checks in Pandora.

Delphos police have located and recovered the vast majority of the stolen property taken in the burglary, but the investigation is continuing at this time.