The following were taken from actual incident reports filed last week by the City of Charleston Police Department. These are not convictions and the names of businesses, complainants, and suspects have been left out to protect the innocent. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty … of course.
December 11 | DRUG, NARCOTICS VIOLATION
Police approached a car parked in the Wal-Mart parking lot with its alarm going off with a man behind the wheel. The man claimed the driver of the car, his girlfriend, was in the store with the keys. When the man got out of the car, police noticed a cap and the plunger of a syringe needle on the floor. When his girlfriend returned, she said the car actually belongs to her mother, and that another person had been in the car several days earlier who’d recently been arrested for possession of illegal narcotics. The girlfriend denied police access to the car. When a friend who’d been with the couple that day approached from the store, and said he’d injected “Ice,” or methamphetamine six hours earlier. Police then searched the car and summoned a K-9 unit, who triggered, and several used and half-full syringes. Officers also found a small bag that contained the girlfriend’s identification card, feminine hygiene products, and approximately 4.5 grams of tested presumptively as methamphetamine. The friend claimed the drugs as his, and the couple denied it was theirs. All three were arrested.
December 11 | INTIMIDATION
A pregnant Ashley River Road woman showed police that she’d been receiving threatening text messages from an unknown person, stating, “We gone kill your baby bitch.” The woman said she thought the messages might coming be from one of the several women the father of her unborn child is currently dating.
December 11 | TRESPASS
A Magwood Drive healthcare office complained to police that a woman was inside asking patients for money in the waiting room, and lay down on the couch.
December 11 | THEFT OF MOTOR VEHICLE PARTS OR ACCESSORIES
A Savannah Highway car dealership discovered that the eight center caps from the wheels of two Rolls Royces had been stolen. The caps are valued collectively at $8,000.
December 11 | THEFT FROM A COIN OPERATED MACHINE
While investigating an apparent breech of a wet towel dispenser at a Sam Rittenberg car wash, police called in a K-9 unit to try and get a scent off the machine, which had a drop of blood on it. The dog tracked the smell to a nearby church, where a set of keys were found in the parking lot. An officer noticed that the keys had no dew on them, unlike the rest of the surroundings, and probably hadn’t been outside very long. The keys apparently belonged to a truck parked at the church. Officers retained the keys and left a note to their whereabouts on the windshield of the truck.
December 12 | WEAPON LAW VIOLATION
A man on probation for armed robbery was arrested for unlawful possession of a loaded handgun in the parking lot of an Ashley River Road apartment complex. Police had originally approached the man’s car because of the strong smell of marijuana emanating from it. When placing him into the cruiser, the man told officers about the firearm, which was a pink and black 9-millimeter handgun with a bullet in the chamber and 13 more in the magazine.
December 12 | CRIMINAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Responding to a report of a domestic dispute on Doncaster Drive, police found a man with a bleeding axe wound in his hand. The man said he and his girlfriend has been fighting for several hours, with the woman throwing items at him, taunting him to strike her, and then the woman began swinging a 4-foot axe at him. The man said he was able to take the axe away, but suffered a laceration and deep puncture wound to his hand. Police found the woman at a neighbor’s house and took her to the hospital after she complained of several ailments. A witness to some of the fighting said the man twice rubbed his bloody hand across the girlfriend’s face. After being arrested, the girlfriend claimed she was the one who’d been attacked, but went on to “drastically” change her story, and also claimed she had been attacked with a sword and then later a club.
