The Scanner: Never Let Go

VICE GRIP Police responded to a Compare Foods on Arrowood Drive after a badass woman refused to fall victim to a thief who was roaming the store. According to the report, the 28-year-old woman was standing in line at the grocery store and holding cash in her hand while she waited, at which time a man came up and tried to grab the cash from her hand before running out of the store. Fortunately, the man was not able to pry the money from her hand, and the woman was not injured. After they struggled for a moment, the would-be thief gave up and ran out into the parking lot, where he hopped into a waiting car and sped off.

SMOKERS GON’ SMOKE Police responded to a Circle K convenience store on East W.T. Harris Boulevard after an underage girl caused a ruckus in her attempt to get a single blunt wrap. Employees told officers that the suspect walked into the business right at midnight and tried to buy a cigar. After she was denied by the cashier, the girl walked behind the counter and grabbed a Game cigar, then tried to leave the store with it. When an employee confronted her at the door, the girl stated that she would go get her brother, who would shoot up the business if they didn’t let her leave. She then left in a red Honda Accord. In an unrelated incident at a Circle K on Sunset Drive, a woman threw a large slushie on the cashier after he asked for ID to sell her two Black & Mild cigars.

SAY WHAT? We recently reported on a property manager who found “Someone was murdered here” written on the wall of an abandoned apartment in red liquid, and a local judge recently received a similarly creepy message, albeit seemingly more of a prank. According to the Mecklenburg County judge, he arrived home to his south Charlotte home to find that someone had posted a metal sign to his front door that read, “No Trespassing. We’re Tired of Hiding the Bodies.”

CALL ME TOMORROW Police finally took action against a west Charlotte woman after she spent the month of May on the phone with 911, whispering sweet nothings into the dispatcher’s ear. According to the report, the woman called 911 at 7 a.m. on May 28 trying to report herself as the victim of an assault with a deadly weapon that was later found to have never happened. Records showed that the woman had unlawfully called 911 32 times between May 2 and May 28.

PARK IT A suspect trying to evade arrest in south Charlotte’s Farmington neighborhood did a dumb, dangerous thing that ended up looking like a cool trick when he hopped out of a moving vehicle recently. According to the report, an officer was trying to pull the man over on Peach Grove Lane when the man suddenly jumped from the car. He was arrested, and luckily the car went right into a garage rather than run someone over or slam into another car with a driver inside. The only problem was that the garage door wasn’t open, so by the time it came to a stop, the car had done $1,500 in damage to the door.

STORAGE WARS A 54-year-old south Charlotte man went to check on the horror movie paraphernalia that he kept in Extra Space Storage on Ardrey Kell Road and found terrifying results. At some point over the last month, an unknown suspect had apparently broken into the victim’s storage unit and stole a 3-foot Jaws statue worth $2,400; a 2-foot Freddie Krueger statue worth $1,500; a bust of Linda Blair from The Exorcist worth $500; and another bust of a zombie from Night of the Living Dead worth $500.

TOXICITY Police responded to Piedmont IB Middle School near Uptown just before the school year ended after a teacher found that one of her students did not want her to have a good summer. The 52-year-old woman told police that someone had tainted her water, and worse yet, she did not find out until her supervisor told her about it. The report does not state exactly how the water was tainted, or how much of it was drunk, but it makes my stomach uneasy just to see the word “water tainting” listed in the report.

SNACK TIME Police responded to a 7-Eleven on North Tryon Street recently after two suspects came into the store and began knocking shelves over, doing a total of $1,000 in damage. When the duo got tired, they each picked up a bag of Doritos and walked out of the store. Two weeks later, just a little further south down the street at an Xpress Mart at the intersection of Matheson Avenue, an employee reported that a man walked in and nonchalantly filled up a slushie, picked up a pack of crackers and a bag of Cheetos Puffs, then walked out while already eating the food.

THE GREAT ESCAPE A 44-year-old University City woman filed a police report after her daughter ran away and made a big fuss out of her exit. The mother told officers that her daughter got angry with her, then tried to smash a TV over her head. Then, the daughter sprayed bathroom cleaner in her mother’s eyes before grabbing some clothes and running out of the home. The mother did not see which way her daughter went … for obvious reasons.

WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE A 49-year-old east Charlotte man can’t even trust his own family members around his property — even when he’s standing right there. The man called police on one recent afternoon after he had some family friends over who weren’t there just for a good time. The man told police that he went outside to smoke a cigarette at around 4 p.m., and when he came back in, he saw his two nephews running out the back door holding four car tires with rims that he had been keeping in his home.

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