Burglar steals $12G in iPads from Hempstead school, police say

A homeless man was arrested and charged with stealing $12,600 worth of iPads and headsets from a Hempstead charter school building in two burglaries, beginning on Saturday night when he entered through a first-floor window, police said.

After stealing eight iPads and a headset at 10 p.m. from the Academy Charter School building on Fulton Avenue, Theodore K. Simonson went back at 4:19 a.m. Sunday — entering through a first-floor door — and stole 14 more iPads and a headset, Nassau County police said in a news release Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Hempstead police spotted Simonson, 54, nearby on Jackson Street, and he was arrested without incident, police said.

The equipment has not been found and investigators are trying to determine what happened to it, police said.

Simonson was charged with two counts of third-degree felony burglary and arraigned on Wednesday in First District Court in Hempstead, police said. He was ordered held on $40,000 bond or $20,000 cash, online court records show. He is represented by the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County.

A school official was not available to comment Wednesday morning and the school's executive director could not be reached Wednesday night. The Academy’s website says it has an elementary, a middle and a high school in Hempstead, along with a K-2 school in Uniondale.

With Ellen Yan