After DNA hit on bloody towel, convicted burglar charged again
Authorities say they have linked Jatinder Pal Singh to at least three "hot prowl" burglaries of occupied homes in the neighborhood near UC Berkeley.
A blood-stained towel helped police catch a convicted burglar who broke into the home of a Cal football player and his housemates while they slept, according to court papers.
Police say 40-year-old Jatinder Pal Singh stole an electric scooter from their living room along with a Cal Football backpack holding a laptop.
On Friday, the Alameda County district attorney's office charged Singh with first-degree home burglary, court records show.
In recent court papers, police wrote that Singh was already in custody before these latest charges, suspected of breaking into two other Southside homes near UC Berkeley.
He has five burglary convictions from 2019 and 2020, along with a felony strike, according to police and court records.
That's in addition to four attempted burglary convictions from 2013 to 2016, court papers show.
The most recent charges stemmed from a burglary Oct. 4, 2025, sometime between midnight and 5 a.m. in the 2600 block of Regent Street not far from Cal.
According to Berkeley police, Singh removed a screen and forced open a locked window to get inside the students' apartment.
When the roommates woke up in the morning, they found a discarded hand towel on the living room floor where the scooter had been, police wrote.
The towel appeared to be bloody and did not belong to the housemates, police wrote, so BPD collected it as evidence.
When the results came back from the lab earlier this month, the DNA hit from the blood stain matched Singh, police wrote.
In his other recent pending case, according to police, Singh broke into occupied homes near the Cal campus Aug. 8 and Oct. 14 stealing items of "great monetary value," according to charging papers.
Singh's charged cases in Alameda County date back to 2012. Many were consolidated or dismissed over the years, or resulted in only probation.
He is now being held at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin with a combined bail of $325,000 — although he appears to be ineligible for bail due to one of his listed cases, according to booking records.
Singh is scheduled to enter a plea in the new case March 5.
The Scanner has requested a booking photograph and will update this story if it becomes available.
