Flashing hazard lights lead police to burglary suspects

Note to burglars: when fleeing the scene of the crime, turn off your getaway car's hazard lights.

Calvert County police said someone entered two homes on Quarles Road in St. Leonard on Nov. 30 and stole prescription medication and about $3,000 in jewelry. Witnesses told deputies about a suspicious car they had spotted near the homes that day, authorities said.

It didn’t take long for sheriff’s deputies to spot the suspicious car and another one “driving in an unsafe manner,” authorities wrote in a report. Both cars also had “their hazard lights blinking,” the report said.

Deputies pulled the cars over and arrested the cars’ drivers — Jeffrey T. Phelps, 20, of Lusby and William R. Fitch, 19, of St. Leonard — and charged them with burglary, they wrote in the report.

-- Del Quentin Wilber