The Blotter January 12 2012

A clerk at a video store on North Highland Avenue said he made a call on his iPhone4 during a slow moment on the job. After the call ended, he put the iPhone on a counter and waited on two customers. A few minutes later — yep — his iPhone was gone. The clerk didn’t do anything about the theft for a few days. Then his friend mentioned that he received some rather risqué texts from the clerk’s missing iPhone — naked photos of some dude with tattoos on his neck and ears.

The clerk believes the naked guy is a customer he waited on at the video store.

NEW YEAR, NEW WOUNDS: Just 90 minutes into 2012, an officer responded to a call about a 26-year-old man who’d been shot in the stomach on Campbellton Road. The guy’s girlfriend told police she was unlocking the door to her apartment when the upstairs neighbor started shooting his gun off to celebrate the New Year, and a stray bullet struck her boyfriend. The girlfriend said she didn’t know the neighbor’s name, but described him as a tall, skinny bald guy wearing a dark sweater and a hat.

A helpful citizen revealed to police that the girlfriend’s story, yeah, it was a lie. The 26-year-old man actually shot himself and didn’t want to admit it to police. The officer inspected the 26-year-old man’s clothes for clues and wrote, “Looking at the jacket that he was wearing, the bullet hole was on the inside of his right pocket, indicating that he did shoot himself.”

WHERE WOULD JESUS POOP? In Midtown, an officer got a call about a suspicious man walking around a Methodist church on Ponce de Leon Avenue. At around 2 a.m., the officer drove up and talked to the guy, who claimed to be the pastor of the church. The man-who-would-be-pastor was sitting by the door. As the officer walked closer, he noticed (and smelled) that the guy had taken a dump on the church steps. The man, 45, was charged with defecating in public and went to jail.

HIGH TIMES: A woman said she was at a vacant apartment on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive when a man named “Dollar” pulled her hair, robbed her, and raped her — also Dollar cut her man’s throat and set him on fire near the creek. An officer looked around and found a few problems with her story. First, the vacant apartment she mentioned — it burned down months ago. And there’s no creek — the area is landlocked. The officer asked: What did Dollar steal? The woman said she didn’t remember, then she said he stole some cans. Apparently, the woman is a crack addict, and a paranoid schizophrenic to boot. Medics confirmed that she was on drugs and not seriously hurt.

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