WEST HARTFORD — – A 60-year-old woman, a career burglar, faces new charges after police caught her leaving a Bentwood Road home with $400 worth of stolen jewelry in her pocket, latex gloves and a screwdriver, police said Wednesday.
Oksana Lysenko has 40 convictions and has spent numerous stretches in Connecticut prisons since 1983, records show.
“We’ve been arresting her for years,” police Capt. Joseph Lasata said of Lysenko, who was arrested Friday when police responded to a resident’s tip about suspicious activity at a neighboring home.
Lysenko is accused of using a screwdriver to force open the door to the house, which police said she picked at random.
She was being held, with bail set at $500,000, and is due at Superior Court in Hartford on Aug. 20 to answer charges of fifth-degree larceny, third-degree burglary, second-degree criminal mischief and possession of burglar’s tools, police said.
Her record includes convictions for burglary, larceny, possession of narcotics and escape from custody. She has a fourth-degree larceny case pending at Superior Court in Hartford resulting from an arrest April 16 by West Hartford police.
During one West Hartford burglary in September 2003, Lysenko was confronted by a resident of the Dover Road home as she climbed through a window to get inside.
She walked away without saying a word. She stuck the man in the hand with a sharp object when he followed her but was captured quickly by police after the man used a bystander’s cellphone to call police.
In a Courant story on Sept. 6, 2003, about the Dover Road case, police said that Lysenko had been arrested more than 60 times.
Lysenko was sentenced in December 2003 to 55 months for the Dover Road burglary, court records show.
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