Police nab suspect in robbery spree

Lumberton police recognized man from media reports

By: Scott Morgan
   BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP — News coverage of a man who reportedly took his 4-year-old daughter on a robbery and fraud spree last week led to a Lumberton police officer recognizing the suspect as a 29-year-old Wrightstown man.
   According to police, Aaron Kelly of Jacobstown-Arneystown Road confessed to stealing the wallet of a 73-year-old Bordentown woman and then using her credit card to buy nearly $370 worth of electronics and cigarettes from the Hamilton Wal-Mart around 3 p.m. March 22.
   Police said Mr. Kelly reached into the coat pocket of the Bordentown woman while she was in the Acme parking lot on Route 130, took her wallet, then drove off with a small child in an older model green Jeep Cherokee that afternoon.
   Police said a credit card belonging to the woman was almost immediately used at the Wal-Mart, where surveillance cameras recorded Mr. Kelly buying a DVD/VCR player, cigarettes and a clock, with his daughter at his side. Further charges to the card were incurred at the Garden State gas station on Route 130, next to the Hamilton Post Office, and at the Raceway gas station on Route 130 in Bordentown, police said
   Footage of Mr. Kelly in the Wal-Mart was shown by various media outlets in the area last week, leading a Lumberton officer to recognize Mr. Kelly from an incident there on March 28, police said.
   According to police, Lumberton officers arrested Mr. Kelly that afternoon in connection with the theft of a woman’s purse in the parking lot of the ShopRite on Route 38. He posted bail and was released in that incident, but the incident spurred Lumberton police to call Bordentown officers. Police said township officers went to Mr. Kelly’s residence on March 30, where he confessed to the Bordentown and Hamilton incidents.
   Police said he cited heroin addiction as the reason for the crimes.
   Mr. Kelly was charged at 11 a.m. that day with robbery and endangering the welfare of a child. He was taken to the Burlington County Jail, where he remains lodged in default of $80,000 bail.