St. Thomas: Man Charged Over Gaming Machine Keys Taken From Bushwackers, Police Say

A man has been charged with grand larceny after police say he took a set of keys from a St. Thomas gaming center — among them the keys that open the cash pans on its gaming machines — and then walked back into the same business the following Sunday.

That is when they arrested him. What happened in between is what makes the case unusual.

The Virgin Islands Consortium reported the case, and no other outlet appears to have picked it up.

Police say it started on the evening of Sunday, September 13, at Bushwackers Gaming Center in Crown Bay Shopping Center. A man walked up to the cashier window, reached inside, removed a bunch of keys and left. Officers were called to the business the following afternoon on a report of grand larceny.

Police said the keys included a supervisor’s set alongside those for the cash pans. Employees recognized the man from previous visits but didn’t know his name, and investigators said surveillance footage backed up their account. The next day, staff came back with a partial identification: he was known as “Gus,” and he worked on the beach near the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Replacing the keys, changing the locks and swapping out other components on the machines would run to at least $1,850, employees estimated — before labor.

Then, a week on, “Gus” walked back in.

It was Sunday, September 20. Staff called police again, officers responded, and the man was identified as Augustus Titre.

A different account

Titre had a different version of events. He told officers he had found the keys. Assuming they belonged to a hotel guest, he said, he handed them to his supervisor at the Ritz-Carlton.

So police called the supervisor. The supervisor confirmed it: Titre had recently given him a set of keys, and he believed they were still sitting in his office.

Titre was arrested and charged with grand larceny regardless. Bail was initially set at $20,000. He couldn’t meet it, and was remanded into custody pending a first appearance before Magistrate Julie Smith Todman, scheduled for Monday.

Whether that hearing went ahead is unclear. When the Consortium published on Tuesday morning, the public court docket still didn’t show whether the advice-of-rights hearing had taken place, or whether Titre was being held. As of September 22, nothing further had been reported, and the Virgin Islands Police Department’s public arrests listing carried no release on the case.

Nothing in the reporting suggests any gaming machine was opened, or that any money was taken.

Titre is accused, not convicted. The allegations police describe have not been tested in court.

Gaming businesses have been targeted elsewhere, too. Two people were arrested over an armed robbery at a game room near Edom, Texas, and two men were arrested over a run of gaming machine burglaries in Illinois.

Featured image: Crime scene tape. Illustrative image. Photo: Kidfly182 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0