When a New Haven police officer heading to a burglary call saw a man with a hand-truck rolling a stove down the street on Saturday night, it raised a question.
The officer stopped Brian Howard, 45, of New Haven, and asked who he was and where he had gotten the stove from, police said.
Howard told police he’d found the stove in the back yard of a home on Platt Street, police said.
The address given was the same one that the officer was going to to investigate a report of a burglary in progress, police said.
When the officer arrived at the house, he found the back window smashed, the back door open and an empty space in the second floor apartment, where there used to be a stove.
Officers brought the stove back to the apartment and Howard to jail, police said. He was charged with burglary in the second degree and larceny in the sixth degree.
