Two Poland Hall women learned a lesson in trust the hard way after $427 in property was stolen from their room Friday morning.

Shelbyville freshman Leon J. Reaves has been charged in connection with a burglary in a seventh floor room belonging to Kevil freshman Nora A. Gipson and Gretchen L. Kessler, a freshman from Evansville, Ind.

The night before, Reaves had been a guest in the women’s room.

Reaves was arrested at 3 p.m. Friday for receiving stolen property under $300 after campus police found some of the stolen items in his sixth floor Poland room.

Reaves was released yesterday from Warren County Regional Jail on a court order.

“They stole our key one night and came in the next morning when they knew we were gone and took a lot of our electronics,” Gipson said. “And they were probably coming back for more, but we came back.”

Kessler told police that the two left their seventh floor room at 9:45 a.m. Friday and returned at 10:45 the same morning to discover 14 items missing from their room.

Capt. Eugene Hoofer said the women told police the door was locked when they left, and there was no sign of a forced entry.

Gipson said Reaves must have entered the room with the key that was stolen the night before.

She said she and her roommate went over all of the possibilities of who could have taken the items with police. One of her friends recalled hearing one of Reaves’s friends talking about how much the electronics were worth.

Police obtained a search warrant to enter Reaves’ sixth floor room and found Gipson’s television remote, valued at $15, and Kessler’s spool of 75 blank CDs, valued at $60.

The other items taken from the room, totaling $352, were discovered at an off-campus location that Hoofer would not identify.

“I foresee more arrests coming in the near future,” Hoofer said. “Hopefully within the next day or so, we’ll have some more people arrested.”

Reach Abbey Brown at [email protected].