Dallas-area parolee arrested in Gatesville burglary spree

Gatesville police caught a Dallas-area parolee on camera after a weeklong string of burglaries that left Central Texas homeowners out thousands of dollars in personal belongings. The suspect, identified as Roger Preston Simmons, was arrested Sunday morning, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice told KWTX.

KWTX linked Simmons to at least two homes broken into throughout the week in Gatesville, a case that stretched across Coryell County and kept residents on edge as investigators worked through the burglaries. The report said the thefts involved thousands of dollars’ worth of personal belongings taken from Central Texas homes.

The arrest also put Simmons’ supervision history in focus. He was out on parole from the Garland area for aggravated robbery before the Gatesville burglaries, and he was later arrested in Fannin County on a parole violation. That sequence gives local officials a closely watched test of repeat-offender monitoring, especially when a parolee is accused of hitting multiple homes in the same area.

For Gatesville and the surrounding county, the case closed more than one burglary at once and gave police a suspect tied to a crime pattern that had residents worried about more than one home. The identification through camera evidence and the parole arrest in another county suggest investigators were able to connect the dots across jurisdictions, even as the damage had already been done in Coryell County neighborhoods.