PRINCETON, WV (LOOTPRESS) – Blood and fingerprints left at a crime scene led to the capture of a burglary suspect.
On July 28, 2024, at around 10:30 AM, Officer E. D. Leftwich was sent by Mercer County 911 to 800 Highland Ave, Princeton, Mercer County, WV, in response to a reported burglary. Upon arriving, he noticed that the side door of the house had been forcibly opened.
The auction company’s manager informed me that they found the door damaged when they arrived and immediately called 911, followed by notifying the homeowner. The estimated cost for repairs to the door and its frame is approximately $1,500. Several blood splatters were observed throughout the garage. The officer collected evidence, including a shovel with five blood drops, a sample of blood from a table, a sample from a large blood pool on the floor, a sample from a smaller blood pool, a plastic bag with blood, and a sample from the doorway linking the garage to the house. The door connecting these two areas was also damaged, and it is estimated to cost around $1,000 to repair. Officer Leftwich photographed and secured these items as evidence. He found a piece of steel labeled as item 12 in the room between the garage and the residence.
Next, he gathered evidence from the west foyer, where the glass in the south-facing door was shattered. A blood spot was found on the glass shards, which he collected and marked as Evidence Item 8. Further evidence was collected from the main hallway leading to the front entrance, where he discovered a blood spot on a drape next to a broken window. This drape is marked as evidence item 9, and the estimated repair cost for the damaged window is about $100. In the upstairs area, evidence item 10 was a magnifying glass with an unidentified fingerprint. The last collection site was the basement, where the east-facing basement door had been broken into during a previous burglary on July 16, 2024. This door was again damaged, leaving a small blood splatter on a glass shard, which was collected. The estimated damage for this door is also around $100.
Officer Leftwich sent three blood samples and the magnifying glass to the lab for analysis to identify the unknown suspect. After securing the scene, he spoke with a witness, who reported hearing the alarm at around 4:00 AM on July 28. She did not see any intruders.
On August 12, 2024, at around 10:00 AM, the officer received a forensic lab report from the WV State Police Crime Lab indicating that the magnifying glass contained a fingerprint matching Belinda K. Ridge, born on March 23, 1983. The officer pursued warrants for suspect Belinda Ridge and a search warrant for her DNA to check against the samples found at the scene.
Ridge was charged with burglary and destruction of property. She is currently in Southern Regional Jail.
