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.
October 3 | LARCENY BY FALSE PRETENSES
A Magnolia Road business owner complained to police and the owner of a window-cleaning service that they had been tricked into doubt-paying for a job. When reviewing the day’s books, an employee at the business noticed that $40 cash had been paid out twice to the service on the same day for the same job. The service owner arrived and watched security camera footage with police and identified that the second man who approached the business for an additional payment had been his employee. But, he added, the man had been fired for more than a year. Regardless, the service owner refunded the $40.
October 3 | FORGERY, COUNTERFEIT
A local company complained to a Sam Rittenberg Boulevard bank that someone had been posting fraudulent checks on their account. A records review showed that three checks, each made out for $1,578.31, had been tendered to the bank for cash from the company. The second of the three checks had been administratively held-up. Police believe that someone has obtained some of the company’s checks, altered them, and has been cashing them. The banks refunded the company close to $5,000 so far.
October 4 | BURGLARY
A neighborhood resident noticed that a clubhouse located on E. Estates Boulevard, which had been boarded up, and had been broken into. Management called police, saying that the clubhouse had been boarded up for some time due to squatters taking up residence in the clubhouse, and that it could only be rented if paid for ahead of time by residents. When police arrived, they found a door pried open, and personal items strewn throughout inside, including food and a couch and blankets.
October 4 | DRUGS, NARCOTICS VIOLATION
Officers found a bevy of drugs in a car that included 116 pills of various colors in the shapes of “bats and grenades” that tested positive for MDMA. Earlier, they attempted a traffic stop of a car traveling down Orleans Road, when the vehicle roared off from the middle lane and struck the side mirror of another car. The officer stopped the chase and attended to the struck car. Soon, the fleeing car was found via records check and the rightful owners were contacted. The daughter of the owner said she had left the car out of gas with her boyfriend. An eventual search of the car, the alleged driver turned up a pistol, a small amount of what appeared to be marijuana, and the 116 pills.
October 4 | SIMPLE ASSAULT
A Salisbury Street woman told police that she and one of her male roommates had assaulted her and her other male roommate after she collapsed the fireplace shelf she was standing on while placing something on a higher shelf. Initially, the man became angry and went outside with a stick of some sort and acted like he was hitting the other man’s car, and may have actually struck it. When the man returned inside, an argument ensued that resulted in pushing initially and then punches being thrown between he two men. After being forced to calm down, the angry roommate then barricaded himself inside his bedroom, but apparently climbed out his window with a rope, reentered the window of his male roommate’s bedroom, and tied the doorhandles together. Eventually, the other male roommate kicked the door in, breaking it off its hinges.
October 4 | DEATH INVESTIGATION
Police responded to the scene of a vehicle accident near the intersection of I-526 and Savannah Highway, only to find a man dead in his car with a gun in his hand.
October 4 | DUI
Police told an apparently drunken driver in the drive-thru of a Sam Rittenberg Boulevard fast-food restaurant to get out of line and park the car. The man struggled to understand the police, and drove off, down the road. When police stopped the man a second time, officers told him to get out of the car. The man said he would, and then opened his door, and then just as quickly shut it again. Eventually, the man complied and appears to be quite intoxicated. After failing a few testes, he was quickly arrested.
