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UW's next senior class president charged in bus ticket grab
The recently elected UW-Madison senior class president has been charged with misdemeanor theft for stealing bus tickets from the Memorial Union information desk.
Oliver Delgado won election as president of the class of 2008-09 by garnering 430 votes in the spring election, beating Jeff Wright (388 votes) and Tim Fung (101), according to election tabulations by the Associated Students of Madison.
But a couple of weeks before the early April vote, Delgado was caught stealing bus tickets so he and his roommate could get out of Madison for spring break, according to a complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court. The complaint was not filed until April 18, meaning Delgado made his initial appearance on the charge on April 21, when a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf and a signature bond was authorized.
According to the criminal complaint, when the information desk was closed for the night at 10 p.m. on March 16, all the tickets for the Van Galder bus which runs between Madison and Chicago were accounted for. But when the desk opened again on March 17, six tickets were missing.
Van Galder was told of the thefts and instructed its drivers to be on the lookout for the stolen ticket numbers. When Delgado and his roommate used two of the tickets to take the bus to O'Hare International Airport to catch a flight, his name was noted and Van Galder employees notified the Memorial Union staff, which in turn called the University of Wisconsin Police Department.
Officers tracked down Delgado at his Gorham Street apartment on March 27, and he admitted to the theft, the complaint says.
Delgado told UW Officer Robert Glejf that he and his roommate, who was not charged in the incident, went to the Union to get tickets for the bus so they could catch a flight for vacation, and said they needed to catch the earliest bus so they could make their flight.
But when they got to the Memorial Union, the information desk was closed. "Delgado said he saw the folder on the counter and opened it up and stated he took four to six tickets out of the folder," the complaint says. Delgado returned two of the tickets to the officer.
The complaint is silent on what happened to the remaining two tickets which were missing from the information desk book.
