MILPITAS – On Tuesday, July 21, a female suspect – 34-year-old Selina Marie Calyen – was detained by Milpitas Police after officers watched her ride her bicycle and commit several traffic violations. She was on Roger Street at Washington, near both Thomas Russell Middle School and Marshall Pomeroy Elementary.
When a person is riding their bike, there are certain measures they legally need to take. Bicyclists need to stop at red lights just like car drivers, and should drive with the flow of traffic to avoid collisions, for example.
According to Milpitas Police Department’s Sergeant Matthew Miller, during the initial contact by officers for a traffic violation, the female suspect began to try to flee from them. “When officers caught up to Calyen, she resisted their efforts to take her into custody, and they noticed she was wearing a ballistic vest.”
Calyen was detained in this area while riding a bicycle.
Miller said that “during the course of the investigation, officers searched Calyen and located two loaded pistol magazines, handcuffs, a collapsible baton, burglary tools and drug paraphernalia.”
These items made police believe that Calyen was fleeing from officers because she may have been responsible for a burglary in the area. Often when someone is found with unusual items they turn out to have been stolen from a home, possibly without the homeowner’s awareness.
Calyen was booked into the Santa Clara County Jail for resisting arrest, possession of stolen property, possession of burglary tools, possession of an illegal weapon, being under the influence of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
When people are found to be carrying around dangerous weapons or items used to commit a residential or vehicle burglary, it is assumed that there may be other crimes committed by the suspects, and an extensive investigation into current crimes in the area is warranted. The Milpitas Police Department is asking anyone with any information regarding this investigation, or other similar incidents occurring in the city, to call the Milpitas Police Department at (408) 586-2400. Information can be given anonymously by calling the Crime Tip Hotline at (408) 586-2500 or via the Milpitas Police Department website at: http://www.ci.milpitas.ca.gov/government/police/crime_tip.asp.
As for Selina Calyen, available arrest records show only one prior arrest on an outstanding warrant in 2014. But her Facebook page tells a personal story of many recent setbacks that may have led to her desperate actions. In a recent post, she says she went from having everything to “barely nothing!!!” She says she went from being married seven years to divorced, losing a best friend, from being a teacher to being unemployed and broke, and suffering from chronic stage 3 Lyme disease.
She also traces her troubles to beginning when she and her family rented a house in Fremont, which turned out to be infested with mice and rats, black mold and other toxins, and a sewage break. She claimed the homeowner knew about the problems when she rented it to them for $1600 a month, but only laughed in their faces when confronted with the problems. In her very long post, however, she also says she is grateful for her three children, her own mother, and for her late friend “Zee” who is her “guardian angel”. She says, hopefully, that “as much as it rains, and pours and storms, it can’t rain forever!!!!”
CrimeVoice staff contributed to this report