BATON ROUGE - Last month, multiple stores at the Duplantier Place Shopping Center were burglarized. Now a recent arrest, for a different crime, and a search warrant filed by the Baton Rouge Police Department last week could point to a specific suspect.

Last Friday, James Hutchinson was arrested in two vehicle burglaries near a Walmart Neighborhood Market on Highland Rd. Police were already looking at him as a possible suspect in the burglaries because of a job application he submitted at one of the stores.

Hutchinson is on probation in a 2023 attack on his girlfriend and her mother at the Hub apartments on Highland Rd, less than a mile away from the shopping center.

Investigators got a break in the burglaries when someone recognized the backpack a burglar was carrying in surveillance video. Someone carrying a similar backpack had applied for a job at one of the stores, and the store manager was able to provide that application to the police.

The name on the application was James Hutchinson. The date of birth on the application, December 20th, 2002, matched the age Hutchinson was in the 2023 attack, which was 20.

WBRZ went to the shopping center and spoke to Light House Coffee manager Amber Elworth, one of the stores that was burglarized.

"Early to mid-July, we were robbed three times in a week... The last time, he threw a rock through our front door, causing a lot in damages and he stole a safe," Elworth said.

Elworth said the store has been burglarized four times recently, including three times in one week. Damages totaled more than $2,000.
Elworth said the crimes forced the store to become a cashless business. When they put their message on social media, people sent them around $5,000 in donations.

"The Baton Rouge community has been unbelievable. We've had people asking for our Venmo and asking for our address and people have just been mailing us checks and just sending us cash over Venmo," Elworth said.

No one has been arrested in the Lee Drive burglaries and police would not discuss Hutchinson's status in the ongoing investigation.