The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office handled the following incidents in Arlington during the first half of July. See next week’s issue for Arlington’s remaining July incidents.
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.
July 1
U.S. 70 (other theft, non-specific)
A woman lost her wallet after putting it atop her car when she left Kroger (11635 U.S. 70) and then driving off. She couldn’t find it when she returned. The wallet contained her credit cards, $600 in cash and a Galaxy S3 cell phone. The incident happened between 12:15 p.m. and 2 p.m. July 1.
Walker Street (false pretenses/swindle/confidence game)
A caller scammed a Walker Street resident with an increasingly common college tuition ruse on July 1. She said a man calling himself David Smith called her to say she was eligible for a $9,000 Pell grant. He directed her to buy an iTunes gift card from Kroger (11635 U.S. 70) and send him the card’s information online.
The victim did not receive a grant check from Kroger as the man promised.
July 2
Knob Creek Trail (misdemeanor vandalism)
The owner of a Chevrolet Cruze found her car’s front driver’s side door damaged in her driveway around 2 p.m. on July 3.
July 6
Country Valley Drive (identity theft)
A woman found fraudulent accounts on a credit report she requested on June 15. As she reported on July 6, the Experian credit agency report showed a CitiFinancial with a zero balance, opened July 1, 2008; a OneMain Financial account for $7,298, opened Jan. 9, 2008; and a Midland Funding account for $7,299.00, opened March 1, 2012.
She reported the fraud to Experian on June 16, and an Experian rep advised her to file a police report. The victim has no idea who opened the accounts or how they knew her personal information.
July 7
Doctor Logan Road (simple assault/domestic violence)
A man said his nephew attacked him around 6 p.m. July 7. The fight began with an argument over a cigarette being placed on a picture of the suspect’s father.
Both the uncle and the nephew claimed that the other started the fight by charging at each other, and both fell to the ground. The uncle had a small scratch below his left knee, and the nephew had four large gashes on his right shoulder blade.
The uncle said the gashes probably came from his nephew falling on a coffee table during the struggle, but deputies didn’t see any broken glass, damage or blood stains on the table. The nephew said the gashes came from his uncle grabbing his back.
Based on injuries and both parties’ stories, deputies determined that the uncle was the primary aggressor and took him to the Shelby County Jail. The nephew declined transportation.
July 9
Pinckley Road (theft of other trailer)
Someone stole a man’s 18-foot trailer from his home on the 12600 block of Pinckley Road, the owner reported. He said it happened between11 p.m. July 8 and 8:30 a.m. July 9.
He had a tongue lock on the trailer, and his truck was also parked very close to help prevent theft. The suspect must have moved or slide the front of the trailer in order to hook up to it, as well as moving a basketball goal and two garbage cans. The trailer’s tongue weight is about 250-300 lbs. A crime scene technician attempted to lift latent prints from the scene.
The trailer’s information was entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.
Airline Road (theft from building)
Suspects who ordered food at Sonic (6101 Airline Road) tried to pay with a declined credit card on July 9, and they fled the scene with $21.01 worth of food when the waitress asked for another form of payment.
The suspects drove off in a Honda Civic. The Sonic employee said they were smoking something that appeared to be marijuana.
Officers ran an NCIC check on the Wells Fargo Credit Card, which came back as not stolen, and took it into evidence.
July 10
Chester Street/Douglas Street (theft from motor vehicle)
An officer responded to a welfare check on a vehicle parked at Playground of Dreams (Chester Street/Douglas Street) July 10 and found that the front driver’s side windshield was broken out. The victim arrived and said her wallet was missing from under the driver’s seat.
The wallet contained her driver’s license, an unspecified amount of cash and multiple credit, debit and rewards cards. Other items stolen included a Hardin County bank key, Michael Kors purse, an Apple iPhone, garage door opener, and phone charger cord.
The car’s alarm was armed at the time of the burglary, but the victim and her family said they didn’t hear it go off or the glass break while they were at the playground. The victim said she saw two white males and a white female, all in their 30s, in the parking lot when they pulled up to the park. They were standing near two older vehicles. She said they appeared odd, and one of the males was tall and thin and riding barefoot on a hoverboard around the parking lot.
A crime scene tech processed the scene for prints and photos. The victim notified her credit card company of the thefts.
July 11
Winchester/Bailey Station/Schilling Farms (other theft, non-specific)
The District Attorney General’s Public Corruption & Economic Crimes Unit received a referral complaint on June 24 from the Collierville Police Department. Diane George, a candidate for a state representative position, reported reported a problem with her campaign signs being removed from spots where she had placed them. She said she had photos of rival Curry Todd having her signs and the signs of another rival, Mark Lovell. She said Todd admitted to a Collierville code enforcement officer he had taken the signs.
A detective reviewed the photos and could only recognize five Lovell signs in the bed of a truck allegedly driven by Todd.
On July 11, Lovell reported the theft of campaign signs by Todd to the Public Corruption & Economic Crimes Unit. A Lovell supporter allegedly caught Todd twice removing Lovell’s signs without permission. The supporter said he took photos on one occasion. Both Lovell and George allege that more and more of their signs are disappearing from locations.
McAuley Street (other theft, non-specific)
A man reported July 11 that someone took an electric pool pump ($460) and three 50-foot blue hoses ($60 each) from the yard of an unoccupied home.
He placed the pump in the pool around 3:35 p.m. and connected the hoses, running them from the back yard to the front yard, and then left. A friend called to say all items were gone. A neighbor saw two unknown males get out of a white pickup and walk toward the home but didn’t see them enter the back yard or handle the missing equipment.
July 13
Shetland Loop (theft from building)
A woman reported that someone took her Coca-Cola company business iPhone 6 was taken from her home. She name a carpet cleaning employee as the only person in the house at the time of the theft, from 1:15 p.m. to 3 p.m. She noticed the phone missing at 2 p.m.
She used the “Find My iPhone” application to locate her missing cell phone at a home on the 6800 block of Dawnhill Road. The phone was not recovered after a followup in the area of the address.
July 14
U.S. 70 (other theft, non-specific)
The owner of Huron Smith Oil found that gasoline inventory began dropping about 1,500 gallons per month at the Arlington Market, beginning on Dec. 1, 2015. He met with the market owner in April to find out why gas was missing and learned that a black Chevrolet Tahoe and several other vehicles began crowding around Pump 8 during the early evening hours on most days, starting in January.
This was suspicious to the market owner, because no one ever came inside the business, and no sale would be recorded after the subjects left. So he shut down the pump sometime during April and hired a technician to evaluate the pump for problems and replace all point-of-sale systems.
On Pump 8, the technician found a “jumper” (a device used to interfere with how the pump communicates with the point-of-sale system). The jumper allowed one or more suspects to change the pump’s password and control it with a remote.
Since the repairs, the market hasn’t lost any more gasoline. The Huron Smith Oil owner said 8,177 gallons were stolen from December 2015 through April. There were no surveillance cameras at the market during the time of the thefts.
