Horace man sentenced for 20 burglaries in Cass County

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – A Horace man is sentenced to five years in prison for a series of business burglaries in Fargo, West Fargo and across Cass County.

Shelby Whitt, 24,  pleaded guilty to 20 burglaries spanning from June to December 2021. He was arrested in March and prosecutors say he has been cooperative throughout the investigation as nearby agencies in Cass County team up to detain him.

“The collaboration of this kind of incident is really necessary to bring this to a close. In the end, think of it like a convoluted puzzle, essentially, and we all have different pieces but not a picture to see what we’re trying to put together. When we start working together we find pieces that match up together from case to case and correlate more cases than we know exist,” Fargo Police Detective Brent Malone said.

That led police to arresting more suspects and closing unsolved burglaries related to this case.

“There’s a small amount of people that are responsible for a lot of crimes and this is a perfect example of Shelby Whitt and a couple other people committing well over 30 burglary of businesses costing our business owners well over $100,000 plus,” Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski said.

“We really want people to understand the resources in the time that it takes to bring something like this to a close. We get a perception when we watch TV. On one side of it, things are closed in a day. On the other side of it we have guilty people in jail. We don’t get the reality of what we work on and how it comes to fruition. A lot of people expect results instantly and sometimes the pieces aren’t there to do that,” Malone says.

Whitt’s criminal history includes multiple felony convictions related to drugs and theft going back to 2017.