SMOOTH CRIMINALS A report from December tells the tale of a not-so-clean getaway in the University area last month. According to the report, two unknown suspects broke into a secure area on Orr Road shared by multiple auto-related businesses on that street. The suspects got into a Mercedes and tried to drive off in it, but soon learned that the tire was flat. However, that didn’t stop these two rascals from continuing their real-life version of Grand Theft Auto. They then went to the other side of the business and tried to drive a Nissan Titan truck through the gate, but couldn’t get it open. They took a sledgehammer to the lock on the gate until it broke. They got back into the truck but the bad transmission finally gave out and they couldn’t drive that anymore either. Third time’s a charm, so they got into a Ford Explorer and drove off with that, but not before ramming two trucks and a van with it on their way out of the lot.
COP-YCAT Police found a disturbing collection of items in a man’s home in the Genesis Park neighborhood recently, and arrested a man who wanted to be just like them. Officers seized from the home mutliple police volunteer IDs, a blue and red light bar, handcuffs, dogs tags with a bullet attached (yeah, we’re not really sure either), two handcuff keys, a chaplain’s law enforcement badge, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement badge, a CIA hat and, of course, a small amount of cocaine to top it all off.
UNSECURE One suspect didn’t bother going through the process of collecting all those items to impersonate authorities, but instead just saw an opportunity and jumped at it. According to a security guard working at an apartment complex at the intersection of East W.T. Harris Boulevard and Albemarle Road, the victim parked his security vehicle and walked up to the door of an apartment to talk to a resident there. Within just 8 minutes, someone jumped into the Ford Explorer and drove off in it.
BRICK SHOT A 36-year-old woman called police after some vandals started laying bricks right onto her car. The woman told officers that at some point between 3 and 8:45 a.m., unknown suspects threw a brick at the windshield of her Jeep Wrangler while it was parked outside of her apartment at the Kelston Place apartments in east Charlotte. While the glass didn’t break entirely, the Jeep was still difficult to drive, as the brick was still stuck halfway through the windshield where it struck. The victim listed the total damage at $500.
NEGAN Police responded to a man’s home in north Charlotte recently after it was brought to their attention that the man was going through a manic episode and should not be in possession of anything with which he could harm himself or others. Police seized the man’s pocket knife and a bat with barbed wire wrapped around it, because that’s an absolutely normal thing to be in possession of at any time.
TURBO BOOST A 22-year-old man turned to police last week after he said he was assaulted while trying to scooty poot around town. The victim told officers he was riding his electric scooter down the Light Rail Trail in South End when a stranger who was walking in the opposite direction suddenly slapped him on the back of the neck as he passed. The victim wasn’t injured but wanted the assault to be documented.
MISSED CONNECTIONS A 53-year-old north Charlotte man filed a police report claiming that sometime over the span of a month, multiple people had been given his address through dating websites, leading to a slew of uninvited guests for him and his wife. The victims are unsure who keeps giving away the address, so the report was filed as a non-criminal incident, but needless to say, they’d like the parade of romantic hopefuls to stop.
IN THE CROSSFIRE A 39-year-old east Charlotte man walked into an argument he wasn’t involved in last week and came out feeling like he might have to move. The man told police that he was walking up to his apartment at about 2:30 p.m. on a recent afternoon when he saw the suspect next door harassing someone else. The suspect began yelling at him for no apparent reason, according to the report. By the time all was said and done, the victim told police his neighbor had threatened to shoot him and blow up his car and apartment, which wouldn’t be smart considering he lives in the apartment next door. Despite that, the victim told police he believes his neighbor would carry out those threats.
CAR GO Police responded to the scene of a hit-and-literal-run in south Charlotte last week after a man left his vehicle at the scene of a crime, but probably regretted not taking some of his stash with him. The man reportedly wrecked the car at the intersection of I-77 and Tyvola Road then immediately took off on foot without contacting police. Well, police came anyway, and they later listed the items they found in the car when they arrived: a Taurus PT709 Slim 9-millimeter handgun, a Samsung Galaxy 8 cellphone, weed, a traffic ticket in the suspect’s name, ammunition and a bag of blue pills. The report doesn’t state what the pills are exactly, but there must have been a shitload of them, because their value was listed at $6,700.
JACKPOT One Charlottean opened up a package that was wrongfully delivered to their home in northeast Charlotte recently and found something equivalent to finding a $20 bill in an old coat pocket. This person wasn’t cool with the mislabeled mail, however, and called police. The package started out harmless enough: a 10-piece cutlery set and a package of coasters. But at the bottom of the box the unsuspecting resident found some marijuana products mailed in from places where state governments have gotten their shit together and legalized the plant. In the box, the reporting person found a package of Tangerine Dream weed, some sort of edible weed s’mores and two pre-rolled blunts, all of which would later be wasted when the police came to pick it all up.
WRONG MOVE One incident that recently went viral on local news stations and social media platforms deserves a mention this week. Early this month, a woman reported that a man attempted to kidnap her by forcing her into his car in a shopping center on Statesville Avenue in north Charlotte. The woman escaped the man, then smartly ran into the nearby Bushiken Karate Charlotte Dojo. Not so smartly, the suspect followed her inside, where he met with sensei Randall Ephraim, who administered an ass beating. The suspect was transported to the hospital to be treated for injuries before being taken to jail.
All reports are pulled from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department files. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty.
This work by Queen City Nerve is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
