FORT WORTH, Texas -- A missing Baylor University basketball player who has been the object of a search for almost four weeks had complained to a coach before his disappearance that he had twice been victimized by thefts.

Patrick Dennehy's summer league coach says the center complained of cash having been taken from his apartment and the theft of his car stereo. The player told assistant coach Rodney Belcher of the thefts, said Nelson Washington of Redwood City, Calif., who coached the Bay Area Ballers, Dennehy's Amateur Athletic Union team.

"He said Pat had said he was having problems," Washington told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Monday's editions. "Pat had talked to him and said that someone had gotten in his car and taken his stereo and that some money had been stolen out of his apartment."

He said Belcher told him of Dennehy's complaints during a mid-June phone conversation after Dennehy disappeared.

The 6-foot-10 junior has not been spotted since he was reported missing last month and his sport utility vehicle was found abandoned without its license plates in Virginia.

Investigators have called Dennehy's roommate Carlton Dotson, a former Baylor basketball player, a "person of interest" in the case. A search warrant affidavit says an unidentified informant in Delaware alleged Dotson shot Dennehy in the head after the two argued while shooting guns on property outside Waco.

But Dotson's attorney says it's all speculation and friends of both young men say the two bought guns because they feared their lives were in danger.

Washington said he was unaware that Dennehy was missing until Dennehy's stepfather, Brian Brabazon, asked him in mid-June whether he had seen or spoken to the player recently.

When Washington called Belcher and inquired of Dennehy's whereabouts, he said Belcher related that Dennehy had come to see him about the alleged thefts.

Washington, the legal guardian of Senque Carey, a University of New Mexico basketball player and a close friend of Dennehy's, said he believes that both incidents occurred in the days leading up to Dennehy's disappearance, because Dennehy did not mention them when he visited Carey in Albuquerque in late May.

"I think everything kind of happened within a week's time -- his car being broken into and then some money being stolen," he said. "I say that because I know that three weeks before he came up missing, he was in Albuquerque and went to Senque's house. I don't think that [the alleged thefts] had happened then."

Belcher gave no indication whether the situations had been dealt with by the Baylor coaching staff or reported to police, Washington said.

Waco police have no record of complaints related to Dennehy, other than the missing-persons report, which Dennehy's stepfather filed June 19, said department spokesman Steve Anderson.

Dennehy never made members of Baylor's coaching staff aware of personal threats or safety concerns, head coach Dave Bliss has said.

"I don't know what they [Baylor coaches] did," Washington said. "I didn't get the full timeline or the full explanation."