Durham police have charged five people, including two adults in their 20s and 50s, after a string of vehicle break-ins that hit hotel parking lots across the city between Oct. 1 and Oct. 7. A search warrant served at a home on Rosedale Avenue turned up 10 guns, ammunition and cash, and investigators say the arrests are tied to armed robberies and a sexual assault as well.
According to WRAL, 21-year-old Treyveyon Cox and 50-year-old Telisha Hall-Cox were the two adults arrested, while three juveniles were also charged. Police did not identify the minors or detail their specific charges. The charges stemmed from incidents reported on North Roxboro Road and Club Boulevard, and investigators connected the case to a break-in spree at a La Quinta Inn on Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard.
That La Quinta Inn incident unfolded Oct. 1, when officers discovered roughly 19 vehicles broken into in the hotel's parking lot in the 4400 block of Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard, per cbs17.com. Officers were in contact with victims to determine how much property was stolen while collecting evidence related to the incident, the outlet reported, and police said at the time they were working to determine whether earlier break-in cases could be connected.
What the Rosedale Avenue Search Turned Up
The Oct. 14 search warrant at the Rosedale Avenue home yielded 10 guns in total, including four stolen firearms and two automatic weapons, along with ammunition and cash, per the same WRAL report. Cox and Hall-Cox each face four counts of possession of a stolen firearm, two counts of possession of a machine gun, two counts of possession of weapons of mass destruction, and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The seizure echoes an earlier raid this year, when Durham police recovered nine guns, including five stolen firearms, in a search prompted by a deadly shooting and other recent gun violence, according to cbs17.com. Investigators have not detailed whether that case and the October arrests are directly linked.
A Pattern Stretching Across Durham Hotels
The October arrests cap a stretch of break-ins that has hit hotel parking lots across the city for more than a month, the station's report notes. In September, the Homewood Suites in Durham — less than two miles from the La Quinta Inn — was the site of at least four damaged vehicles, including one with a shattered driver's side window and glass shards scattered across the ground. The Comfort Inn next door to the Homewood Suites saw roughly a dozen vehicles broken into back in April.
Durham was not alone. More than 25 vehicles were broken into near a Raleigh hotel in the Brier Creek area, where officers located at least 27 cars hit in the lots, according to a separate account from WRAL. Raleigh police had also responded to two locations on Little Brier Creek Lane, with authorities saying 27 more cars were targeted around 5 a.m., as reported by ABC11. The same report described nearly 60 vehicles broken into in Chapel Hill between 3 and 4:30 a.m., mostly in hotel and apartment lots, with several arrests made there on Aug. 25.
Other Hits Across the Triangle
A Hampton Inn off Cole Mill Road in Durham had at least 13 cars broken into in a single weekend, and Chapel Hill saw 14 vehicles hit in one weekend earlier in August, according to the News & Observer. A Durham hotel on Mount Moriah Road also saw multiple vehicles broken into, though police there did not disclose the exact count, per a separate cbs17.com report. Durham deputies arrested 18-year-old Lester Mayo back in May in connection with a rash of break-ins spanning Durham, Raleigh, Cary and Morrisville, the News & Observer noted.
Despite the string of high-profile hotel parking lot incidents, official year-to-date figures tell a more complicated story. Durham County larceny, including larceny from motor vehicles, was down 12% in 2026 compared with 2025, according to the Durham County Sheriff's Office, which also reported an 8.7% drop in its broader “Top 8 Crimes” category for the first half of the year. Still, the sheriff's office noted that 72 of those larceny incidents — more than half the year-to-date total — occurred in just April and May alone. Reported vehicle break-ins in Raleigh were similarly down 11% this year, while Chapel Hill had already logged 320 break-ins by August, nearly matching its full-year total from 2025.
Drivers across the region are being asked to keep valuable items out of sight inside their vehicles as the investigations continue.
