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Creative Loafing Atlanta

March 07, 2013 News & Views » The Blotter

        
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Man cave breech

by Lauren Keating

Illustration by Tray Butler

A 35-year-old Ellenwood man said someone pried open the door to his storage unit on Northside Drive and took off with numerous items, including a flat-screen TV, a Fender electric guitar, 190 DVDs, a paint gun, handheld grinder and sander, and five Marvel Superhero baseball caps with matching T-shirts. (The Marvel gear is worth $200.) The man said he last visited the storage unit on Jan. 29. A week later, he returned and his stuff was gone.

Housing bust and bite: After work, a teacher walked from a local school to a nearby MARTA bus stop. On the way, a pit bull suddenly ran across the street and chomped down on the teacher's knee. A few more dogs howled from inside the house that the pit bull escaped from. When police arrived they realized the home's front door was wide open and three more pit bulls were about to escape. A cop chased the dogs and managed to catch them before they harmed anyone else.

Neighbors say the homeowners abandoned the place about a week ago. Outside the home, a beat-up Acura was parked the wrong way and had major front-end damage and an expired tag. The teacher was taken to a nearby hospital.

Vanity clue: A man stopped at an intersection on North Avenue when a Nissan Infiniti suddenly turned into his lane and slammed his car in the rear and on driver's-side panel. The Infiniti driver slowed down and looked over — and then zoomed away. The man made note of the Infiniti's cutesy vanity license plate and turned the info over to police.

Alpha gamma diva: A fiftysomething woman was preparing for her sorority convention the next day, so she retrieved two pieces of jewelry that she doesn't wear often and didn't want to forget: a sorority badge and gold ring with her sorority crest on it. The woman said the sorority crest is surrounded by a gold rope design. Apparently, the ring is very rare, only two gold sorority rings were ever made.

The woman put her ring and sorority badge on top of a blue prescription packet in her armoire and closed the door. Her housekeeper alledgedly worked there for four hours that day. When the woman started to pack that night, 12 hours later, the sorority badge was still there, but her ring was gone. She called her longtime housekeeper to report the ring stolen, and the housekeeper said he had a new assistant working that day. No one was seen taking the ring.

The hangover, redux: An officer responded to a call about a lost car and spoke with the car's owner, a 46-year-old man. The man said he could not remember where he parked his car, a 2011 blue Volkswagen Jetta. "The victim stated he looked around in the parking lots of local bars, but could not find his vehicle," the officer wrote. The man said he got really drunk last night, and was "suffering from a nervous breakdown" and could not remember anything that happened all night. He had no idea where he might have parked his car last night, or what time he last saw his car. The officer asked: How about today, have you been drinking alcohol today? Yes, the man replied. "No further action taken," the officer wrote.

Vexed by technology: In Mechanicsville, a 77-year-old man said he went to a neighborhood grocery store to cash a check. While in the store, he cashed the check and decided to buy a lottery ticket. When he left the store, the man said two strange guys approached him. One suspect has a "T" tattooed on the left side of his neck and a paralyzed arm. The other man wore red pants and told the elderly man to "give up the money." The 77-year-old man handed over the $840 cash (from his check).

The elderly man called police. When police checked the store surveillance camera, however, the video clearly showed the elderly man willingly handing over his money to the two strange guys in the store. The cop informed the elderly man about the holes in his story.

Songs by invisible voices: An elderly woman went berzerk at a retirement home in Collier Heights. According to the police report, the woman repeatedly screamed, "My motherfucking radio ain't on." Humming, the woman grabbed a rock and told a caretaker, "If you come back to my door, I will hurt you" and "why can't you fix my radio?" Actually, her radio was blaring loudly at the time.

The woman picked up a rock in her room and said, "I've got this for you!" The caretaker started to leave and walked toward the elevators. The elderly woman followed him, clutching her rock and humming. He was afraid she was going to hurl the rock at him, so he called police. Staffers told police the woman was not a physical threat to anyone, she's just becoming hard to live with. No charges were filed.

Items in the Blotter are taken from actual Atlanta police reports. The Blotter Diva compiles them and puts them into her own words.

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