After searching for two days last week, Bethel police finally found the man they wanted at city hall.
On Friday evening, close to midnight, police received a call that a man was breaking into the city building. Officers arrived to find a window to the main entrance shattered and blood on the door. They walked in to find 32-year-old Joseph Wilson in the city accounting office. He was sitting behind the front desk, and his hand was bleeding. According to court documents, the office “appeared obviously disarranged,” and a blue bag holding receipts and Ziploc bags lay on the desk where Wilson had been sitting.
Two days earlier, the police had issued a community announcement asking for help finding Wilson. A probation warrant had been issued when Wilson did not meet the conditions of his probation for felony assault in the second degree.
On Friday night, Wilson “admitted to going into the building” to officers. His breathalyzer test, which he submitted to on the scene at city hall, read 0.151. That’s nearly twice the legal limit for operating a vehicle.
Wilson told police, “I have been drinking since a day and a half ago. Mixed R&R and Monarch. I’m on the run. I wish you could put yourself in my shoes right now. It’s hard. I did it my damn self. I had nowhere else to go or nothing else to do. It doesn’t make me a thief. Whatever it is, it happened."
Friday’s break-in leaves Wilson with additional charges of burglary in the second degree, criminal mischief in the third degree, and attempted theft in the fourth degree.
