Suspects Arrested In Boardwalk Ice Cream Store Burglary

OCEAN CITY — Two men were arrested last week after video surveillance footage connected them to the burglary of a Boardwalk ice cream parlor.

On June 15, Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) officers responded to the area of 12th Street and the Boardwalk for a reported burglary of an ice cream shop. The store owner told police his shop had been burglarized sometime between 12:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. and several items had been stolen including a safe with roughly a week’s worth of sales in it. The store owner also advised police he had video surveillance of the suspects.

The OCPD detective watched the video surveillance and observed two men later identified as Joshua Skidmore, 19, and Troy Jones, 22, both of Catonsville, enter the store around 3:30 a.m. The two suspects entered the business via a roll-up door that faces the Boardwalk. They entered the business by opening the door and then closing it behind them.

Based on the video surveillance, the two suspects were inside the shop for about 30 minutes and could be seen looking through various rooms and different areas in the store.

Just before 4 a.m., the surveillance video shows Skidmore and Jones exiting the business through a rear door and Skidmore can be shown carrying the store’s safe, according to police reports. Skidmore and Jones can be seen entering the store at least two more times and stealing items from the coolers and shelves. The OCPD detective was able to locate a witness who said a gold Toyota sedan had parked in the alley behind the store around 4 a.m. and then drove off at about 4:20 a.m.

The store owner told police the safe contained seven days of sales from his business and based on his sales receipts the safe would have contained around $15,000. The safe also contained around $500 in rolled quarters and other miscellaneous rolled change. Skidmore and Jones had also been linked to vandalism at a downtown hotel and video surveillance from that scene was also obtained by police, who shared the pictures from the hotel and the ice cream shop on social media.

Shortly after the pictures were posted, the OCPD detective got a call from a man who identified himself as Skidmore’s father, who told police the individual in the pictures was his son, Joshua Skidmore. The father told police Skidmore and Jones had come to Ocean City a day earlier in his gold Toyota sedan. He also said Skidmore and Jones had returned and the gold Toyota was now parked at his home in Catonsville. He also told police the trunk contained numerous amounts of loose change, rolled quarters and mail from Ocean City along with bottled sodas and beer.

The OCPD detective responded to Skidmore’s residence in Catonsville and recovered the loose and rolled change as well as bottles of beer, water and Gatorade. The ice cream shop owner also confirmed the brands of beer and soda recovered from the trunk were the same brands that had been stolen from his store. In addition, the OCPD detective recovered from the trunk what appeared to be parts from the locking mechanism of the safe that had been stolen from the Boardwalk store along with a crowbar.

Based on the evidence, Skidmore was charged last week with burglary, theft over $10,000 and conspiracy to commit burglary. He was taken into custody and was held initially on a $25,000 bond, but was released on Tuesday after posting the bond. Jones has not been charged yet for his alleged role in the Boardwalk store burglary. Both men have been charged with malicious destruction of property, false alarm and disorderly conduct for the unrelated incident at the downtown hotel.