Sep 22, 2015 2 min read

An Avella man was charged in connection with a burglary at a Canton Township house trailer in July.

Jeffrey Brian Little, 39, of 74 Highland Ave., was arraigned Tuesday by District Judge David Mark via video from Washington County jail on charges of burglary and theft.

State police were called July 22 to a home owned by Matthew Alan Thompson on Weirich Avenue. Thompson told Trooper Chad Weaver he stopped to cut grass because he was going out of town for his job as an over-the-road truck driver. Thompson said that as he was walking around the back of the trailer, he saw a man later identified as Little walking toward the road from the back of the trailer carrying a backpack.

When Thompson asked Little what he was doing, he responded that he was just looking at the trailer. Thompson told him that it was his house and he was not welcome. Thompson discovered that the back door of his home was open and pieces of the kitchen faucet were missing from the sink. He told police that the burglar ran in the direction of the railroad tracks.

After getting a description of the burglar, police found Little on the tracks near Caldwell Avenue and Green Street. Inside the backpack, police found drug paraphernalia and brass fittings.

Little was initially placed in jail on a parole detainer. He is scheduled for formal arraignment on Nov. 10 on drug charges filed against him by state police. Mark set bond on the new charges at $50,000. He will have a preliminary hearing before Mark on Oct. 21.