The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office handled the following incidents in Arlington during the latter half of August. For earlier August incidents, see the Sept. 22 issue of The Bartlett Express.
Editor’s note: All suspects are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and values are estimated for stolen/damaged items. These are brief summaries of detailed SCSO reports.
Aug. 17
Lamb Road (felony weapon law violations)
Other students turned in an Arlington Middle School classmate who showed off a knife blade at the bus stop on Aug. 17. The student reportedly showed it to three students, then put it back in his backpack and rode the bus to school. At school, he put the backpack in his locker.
When questioned, the student admitted having the knife, and the school officer seized the weapon. The student received a 10-day out-of-school suspension and a summons for having a weapon on school property. He was released to his mother’s custody.
Aug. 18
U.S. 70 (simple assault)
A Kroger cashier reported that a male pursued and assaulted her between Aug. 7 and Aug. 18.
She described the first encounter at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 7, when she got off work and walked to her vehicle: He started talking to her and then shook her right hand while she was sitting in her vehicle. He asked to kiss her. When she refused, he squeezed her hand tighter, started to pull her toward him and tried to kiss her anyway. She pushed him away with her foot, closed her vehicle’s door and left. She said she wasn’t injured, but she feared he would harm her. She said she didn’t know him and had never seen him until the first time he talked to her inside the store.
She said the next incident was on Aug. 18: He came inside the Kroger and talked to her again just after noon. When she walked outside to her car, he followed, walked up to her and rubbed her left shoulder. He tried to hit her with a grocery basket but missed because she jumped out of the way. She said he left at 1 p.m. and she continued working. She wasn’t injured but said she was again afraid of him. She wrote down the number of the gray Nissan Frontier he was driving and the company name that was on it.
She said he had also been in the store two other times to see her, and a manager said he came inside looking for her on another day.
The responding officers contacted the suspect’s company and learned his real name.
There were no witnesses, but there are security cameras that cover the Kroger parking lot.
Chester Street/Scarlett Ridge Drive (simple assault/domestic violence)
A woman said her boyfriend assaulted her while she was driving on Aug. 18. She was driving northbound on Chester Street, and her boyfriend was in the passenger seat when someone called her. She refused to tell him who the caller was, so he slammed the car into park and snatched the keys from the ignition.
He gave the keys back and wanted her to drive him home, but she told him he could walk. When she wouldn’t let him take the keys back, he grabbed her throat, pushed her neck and snatched the keys, cutting her hand, she said. She said he didn’t choke her during the throat hold.
The responding officers found the victim’s car parked in the middle of Chester, blocking northbound traffic. They located the male suspect on Larry Anderson Lane, walking to his grandmother’s home in the Pine Lake trailer park. His shirt was torn and around his waist, and he had minor scratches to his shoulder.
He carried a locked wooden box he said was the victim’s. In his pocket he had a ceramic pipe he said was for smoking marijuana and a clear plastic straw dusted with a white powdery substance he said was crystal meth.
Officers took him back to the car and got the woman’s permission to search the box. They found the key to it on her key chain and a set of purple brass knuckles in her purse.
The box contained a digital scale, glass pipe, grinder, butane lighter, about 26.7 grams of meth, many plastic baggies and five pills (one hydrocodone, one tramadol hydrochloride and three amitriptyline hydrochloride).
A narcotics officer positively tested the meth and seized the car and money in it as proceeds of drug profits. The woman admitted that all drugs in the box were hers and not her boyfriend’s, but both were charged because he had the drugs in his possession. He went to jail on charges of aggravated assault, possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture/distribute/sell (MDS) and possession of drug paraphernalia. She went to jail for possession of a controlled substance with intent to MDS, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a prohibited weapon.
Aug. 20
Dunsmuir Lane (residential burglary)
Someone broke into four vehicles at a home on the 12100 block of Dunsmuir Lane on Aug. 20.
The homeowner said that the garage door was left open around 5 a.m. and all vehicles were unlocked.
Items stolen included a purse containing two credit cards and a Tennessee driver’s license, $17 in loose change and an HP laptop. A crime scene tech took photos and was able to lift latent prints.
Dunsmuir Lane (residential burglary)
Someone broke into two vehicles at a home on the 12200 block of Dunsmuir Lane on Aug. 20. The victim said his garage was left cracked open. Items stolen included $80 in coins, $20 in cash from his wallet, a Nintendo Wii U and GoPro Silver. A crime scene tech took photos and was able to lift latent prints.
Officers also responded to numerous other houses in the area with vehicle break-ins.
A neighbor across the street said he had video surveillance of the incident around 2:30 a.m. The video showed a two-tone light four-door sedan, possibly an older model Lexus, driving in circles around the neighborhood. Two suspects got in and out of the vehicle, walked to the residence and opened one of the victim’s cars and then walked to the garage where the other vehicle was. Someone kept driving the vehicle around the neighborhood while both suspects approached the home. One was a white male wearing a white T-shirt and the other was a black male wearing dark clothes.
Village Gate Drive (theft from motor vehicle)
A man on the 4400 block of Village Gate Drive said his neighborhood watch group advised him there was a series of thefts from vehicles overnight on Aug. 20. So he and his wife checked and found both their vehicles had been ransacked, but nothing was stolen. Both were entered through the driver’s side doors, which were left unlocked. There was no damage to the vehicles.
He said the ransacking must have happened between 10:30 p.m. Aug. 19 and 10:30 a.m. Aug. 20. His video surveillance system didn’t capture any movement throughout the night, and no latent prints could be pulled from either vehicle.
Village Gate Drive (theft from motor vehicle)
A man said someone stole about three dollars in loose change from his unlocked Nissan Cube on the 4400 block of Village Gate Drive on Aug. 20. Video surveillance showed unknown suspects cruising the area, beginning at 1:50 a.m. until at least 2:30 a.m. The victim said an across-the-street neighbor might have more surveillance footage, and he will check when they return home.
Spearhead Lane (theft from motor vehicle)
A man who left his Volvo unlocked was lucky to find it rummaged through but nothing stolen on Aug. 20. The man, a resident on the 12200 block of Spearhead Lane, had surveillance video that showed a black male wearing a black shirt enter from the front passenger side door at 1:52 a.m. The video also showed a white male wearing a black shirt and a black male wearing a white shirt walking in the street in front of the home during the time of the burglary. An unknown sedan is also seen on video driving past the home several time before and during the auto burglary.
I-40/Airline Road (felony drugs/narcotics violation)
Officers responding to a single-car accident at Interstate 40’s mile marker 23 couldn’t immediately find information on the vehicle’s owner because the vehicle’s registration wasn’t on file and no one was on scene to claim the vehicle.
In plain sight in the car, they saw a silver-and-black handgun that they later determined wasn’t stolen and which was chambered and had a magazine with seven rounds of 9mm ammunition.
Also in plain sight they saw a small bag of a white substance that appeared to be cocaine or methamphetamine (later tested to be 0.4 gram of crystal methamphetamine).
They also located a wooden chest containing a substance that later tested positive as 3.8 grams of marijuana. The chest also contained 26 pills of betizandine hydrochloride (total weight of 5.208 grams).
Officers eventually found two cell phones, two ID cards, a vehicle registration card and a utility application that led them to a specific Memphis resident.
Aug. 24
Dunsmuir Lane (theft from motor vehicle)
Someone caused hundreds of dollars of damage when stealing from a victim’s truck, he reported on Aug. 24.
The man said the theft happened between 2:30 and 2:40 a.m. on Aug. 20 while his Ford F150 was parked with a front door unlocked next to his home on the 12200 block of Dunsmuir Lane. Items stolen included a Glock magazine, Rip ammunition, Lake City ammunition, SOG knife, Apple iWatch, PMag magazines. The suspect did about $900 in damage to the covered bed of the truck in attempts to gain access.
The victim’s neighbor has security camera video of the incident. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office had already entered the iWatch into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.
Renwood Loop (credit card/ATM fraud)
A woman and a male friend went to Beale Street in Memphis on July 19, and she asked him to carry her driver’s license and credit card so she could avoid carrying a purse. She didn’t give him permission to charge anything to her card.
He didn’t return either, so she asked for them about two weeks later. He gave her the driver’s license but not the credit card. He didn’t respond when she continued to ask. When she received her monthly statement, she realized that about $3,200 of fraudulent charges had been made on her credit card.
The friend said he used her credit card for a small purchase of gasoline, but she believes he is also responsible for the additional charges.
Aug. 29
Chester Street (residential burglary)
A resident on the 5600 block of Chester Street found signs of burglary when she returned to her home on Aug. 29. She left around 10:15 a.m., locking all doors. When she returned around 10:15 p.m., she noticed her cable cord was stretched from her bedroom into the hallway.
She then saw that her 42-inch Sony Bravia flat-screen TV ($1,200) was missing and the rear door open. An officer found a broken window with the screen removed ($100).
Aug. 30
Airline Road (theft from motor vehicle)
A man reported on Aug. 30 that his handgun was stolen from his vehicle’s center console the previous evening while he was at work.
He said he worked at Wright Medical (5677 Airline Road) 2-7 p.m. Aug. 29. When he returned to his Toyota Camry, his Cobra handgun was missing.
Aug. 31
Airline Road (theft from motor vehicle)
A trooper checking the state impound lot at 12077 U.S. 70 discovered multiple thefts on Aug. 31. He saw papers outside one of the vehicles and decided to check inside. He noticed the stereo system was missing. Then he checked all vehicles on the lot and discovered that eight were missing stereo systems.
The responding crime scene technician did not lift any fingerprints at the scene.
Doctor Logan Cove (theft from building/access device)
A theft report on Aug. 31 accuses a daughter of about $23,000 in fraudulent charges to a parent’s credit accounts.
The daughter lived with her parent on the 11800 block of Doctor Logan Cove until June 29. Between Feb. 1 and Aug. 31, she reportedly took her mother’s driver’s license information and Social Security Number and used this personal information to add herself to her mother’s credit cards. She then allegedly accessed her mother’s Trustmark bank account to transfer money to herself and pay for the purchases.
The mother canceled the cards and evicted the daughter on June 29.
