Officers arrested a burglar at a Capitol Hill school early Wednesday after the man barricaded himself inside a basement room and booby-trapped it with vegetable oil.
Around 2 AM, a facilities manager at the school called police and said someone had broken into an administrative building in the 1400 block of Bellevue Avenue.
Officers arrived and spotted the suspect through a window, surrounded the building and called for a K9 team to search inside.
After scouring the whole building without finding the suspect, K9 Pele and Officer TJ San Miguel headed toward the basement, where Pele began barking at a door.
Officers opened it to find a barricade of boxes. As Pele continued to bark, indicating a suspect was inside the room, officers kicked aside the boxes and discovered a sheen of vegetable oil, which the suspect had apparently dumped all over the floor of the room.
Police were able to make their way across the slick floor toward the suspect, who came out of hiding and surrendered.
Officers recovered a bag of change and some computer parts he’d taken from the school and booked the 24-year-old man into the King County Jail for burglary.