Noah Douglass-Wiley

A Colorado man is in custody after he allegedly walked out of the Cody Walmart with a backpack full of stolen iPhones.

Noah J. Douglass-Wiley, a 24-year-old Colorado Springs resident, has been charged with a felony count of theft.

The charging documents do not say how many cellphones Douglass-Wiley is alleged to have stolen, but Walmart managers told police that a total of 41 iPhones — valued at $32,650 — went missing from the store on Oct. 9 and 10. Managers also said that Douglass-Wiley was seen in the store both of those days.

In an affidavit filed in support of the charge, Cody Police Officer Scott Burlingame specifically says that Walmart’s surveillance cameras captured Douglass-Wiley stealing a number of phones on the night of Oct. 9.

Douglass-Wiley waited for an employee to leave, then reached his hand into a caged portion of the electronics checkout desk and started pulling out iPhone boxes, according to Burlingame’s recounting of the footage.

“Douglass-Wiley gathers several phone boxes and has to set them down on a nearby shelf, due to the number of boxes he’s holding,” the officer wrote, then, “Douglas-Wiley goes back and gathers more phones from the cage, all while constantly looking around.”

He eventually got a gray backpack, which he loaded up with the phones. After that, “Douglass-Wiley can be seen walking past the self-checkout registers and out of the store, still wearing the backpack full of iPhones,” Burlingame wrote.

The suspect reportedly returned to the store on Oct. 10, but Burlingame hadn’t had an opportunity to review that footage before the charge was filed last week. Walmart managers discovered the thefts and reported them to police on Oct. 11. They provided a description of the suspect and his vehicle that ultimately matched up with Douglass-Wiley and the Toyota Camry he was driving.

Cody police apprehended Douglass-Wiley after he returned to Walmart on the night of Oct. 13 and was recognized by store employees, charging documents say. Officer John Harris caught up with the Camry and stopped it at a gas station not far from the store. Harris initially arrested Douglass-Wiley for driving with a suspended license out of Colorado and the theft charge followed later.

Not long after Douglass-Wiley was arrested, the owner of the Camry called police to report the vehicle as lost or stolen, saying Wiley had permission to take the car, but hadn’t returned it.

According to the owner, he, Douglass-Wiley and two others were vacationing together in Cody and staying at an Airbnb in the 1600 block of 18th Street, Burlingame wrote. The owner of the Camry allowed police to search the vehicle and officers obtained a warrant to search Wiley’s room at the short-term rental. But while police found clothing that matched those seen in Walmart’s surveillance camera footage, they undercovered no signs of the stolen cellphones or the gray backpack Wiley allegedly wore.

When asked about the stolen cellphones after his arrest, Douglass-Wiley reportedly said he had no idea what police were talking about and that he wasn’t the man Officer Burlingame saw in the surveillance camera footage.

“I advised Douglass-Wiley it was him,” Burlingame recounted.

As of Wednesday, Douglass-Wiley remained in the Park County Detention Center, with bail set at $35,000. A preliminary hearing in the case, where a judge will decide whether there’s enough evidence for the case to move toward a trial, is tentatively set for Friday afternoon.