The Scanner: Keeping the Lights On

INDEPENDENT WOMAN A 67-year-old man filed a police report last week after he called a woman’s bluff and soon regretted it. The man told police that he had been away from his west Charlotte residence since Jan. 2, but a female acquaintance of his was still living in his home with the understanding that she would pay for the utilities while he was gone. This agreement lasted a whole three months until the man received a call from the tenant stating that the lights were about to get turned off, and warning that if he didn’t pay her light bill, “she would get rid of his property,” presumably by selling it off. The man refused to pay the bill and returned home as soon as he could only to find that she had followed through on the threat. The man reported the following as missing: three suits worth $678 total; socks, underwear and t-shirts worth $643 total; a $250 tablet; a television worth $250; a Blu-ray player worth $45; a Bluetooth speaker worth $100; and three skill saws worth a total of $290.

‘TIL THE WHEELS FALL OFF One woman’s recent joyride through south Charlotte became a nightmare after she ran her car so ragged it literally buried itself in the street. According to the report, the suspect was driving on Sardis Road near Providence Road when she crossed into the wrong lane and sideswiped two vehicles then collided head-on with a stopped vehicle. The suspect tried to keep it moving, but she found that she couldn’t flee the scene because “her vehicle’s frame dug into the roadway enough to cause the vehicle to stop,” according to the report. When she was finally taken into custody, the suspect (surprise!) showed signs of impairment, and police found “a large open container with alcohol inside of it” on the seat next to her. As for the what she left in her wake, five people ranging in age from 14 to 50 were treated by Medics, although luckily nobody suffered anything more than minor injuries.

TRY A SNICKERS A 26-year-old employee at a Family Dollar on South Tryon Street met with two very angry customers last week who turned candy into deadly weapons. The victim told officers that the suspects came into the store at around 6:30 p.m. and immediately began assaulting him. The first suspect threw a handful of loose change at him, striking him in the back of the head, while the other hit him in the back with a box of Snickers bars. Luckily, the victim was unharmed.

DON’T SEARCH ME, BRO A student at Mallard Creek High School was shocked to learn that school administration was carrying out surprise searches on a recent morning, and they had to ditch their weapon quick. According to the report, CMS Police K-9 units had been in the building conducting searches when one teacher walked into an empty classroom and found an AZ105 stun gun lying in the entrance of the room. The official theory is that a student tossed the gun into the room when he or she realized the searches were happening, but I would question that teacher more closely about how she’s been enforcing rules within her classroom.

RUDE AWAKENING A 31-year-old University City woman filed a perplexing police report recently after someone stole her car while she was in it. The woman told police that someone stole her Kia Sedona from a Circle K parking lot at some time between 1:30 and 2:10 a.m., and she knew it happened because she was asleep in the backseat when it did. It’s unclear from the report whether the car thief woke her up before taking the car or let her out later, but she did report that she lost her driver’s license, debit card, cellphone and a stroller that were in the vehicle at the time it was stolen.

MARKING TERRITORY Police and media worked together to demonize “dirt-bike gangs” back in February after a couple videos surfaced of the large groups of people who get together to ride in packs of dirt bikes and ATVs on Charlotte streets, but now these gangs are truly leaving their mark on Charlotte — literally, I mean. Police responded to a call in southwest Charlotte last week and found that a group of people had run roughshod through a new community in the Starmount Forest area, driving their dirt bikes down freshly poured cement sidewalks, doing $500 in damage and surely leaving a track up their own backs that will be hard to wash off.

A WHOLE SLEEVE A shoplifting suspect in SouthPark Mall must have gotten an exponential amount of steps in last week when he left the mall with an entire arm of Apple Watches. Employees of the Apple Store told police that some unknown suspect was able to walk out of the store with eight Apple Watches concealed on him without any of them noticing that he was stealing. So much for the “geniuses.”

SECURE THE BAG A south Charlotte family could have used a superhero after coming home one recent afternoon to find that their home had been broken into. According to a 31-year-old woman living in the home, someone smashed out the back window of the family’s apartment with a rock at some time between noon and 5 p.m. The thief only in interested in one piece of property in the apartment, however: a Spiderman backpack worth $20. Nothing else in the home was stolen.

JOHNNY APPLESEED An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but the same promise can’t be made for the mechanic. Police responded to a call in the Belmont neighborhood after a man reported that a fruit-chucker vandalized his car. The man told police that he came out to his car to find that the back tail light had been smashed. A resident of the home where the car was parked told the man that someone earlier in the day had reared back and thrown an apple at the car as they walked by, breaking the light.

All reports come from CMPD files. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty.