A complaint of suspicious activity that was phoned in to police in the wee hours of the morning resulted in many residents being awakened and two arrests, according to Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell.
The phone call came in at 3 a.m. July 8, and Officer Chris Waldroup responded to the 100 block of Carriage Way, according to an incident report. As he drove along, he noticed a pickup truck in a driveway with the driver’s side door opened and the interior lights on, and no one in the vicinity.
Waldroup stopped and looked in the vehicle and saw the glove box and center console were opened, and the vehicle’s insurance and registration papers were out on the driver’s seat. Waldroup knocked on the door of the residence and woke up the owner, who reportedly told him that the truck had been parked there since 4 p.m. After checking his vehicle, the owner said nothing was missing from it and noted that his work equipment was still inside the truck.
As Waldroup continued along Carriage Way, he saw another vehicle with the driver’s side door “wide open on the front lawn,” he wrote in his report. As he’d done before, the officer woke the resident, and they inspected the vehicle.
Waldroup returned to his patrol vehicle and as he patrolled the neighborhood, he continued finding more vehicles with the doors opened, interior lights on and glove boxes opened, and other evidence that someone had rummaged through the vehicles. Officer Dillon Waldroup and Sgt. Eli James also joined in the investigation, which stretched onto North Madison Avenue and across North Jefferson Avenue onto High and Maple streets.
Chief Cardwell praised the officers and expressed gratitude to the many victims, noting “knocking on doors in the middle of the night until the residents wake up and then them having to go outside and inspect their vehicles is not an easy task.”
“When all was said and done, there were 18 vehicles that had been entered, all within a half-mile radius of each other,” Cardwell said. He explained the items stolen included phone cords and chargers, and possibly a pocketknife and ammunition. “And they had all been left unlocked; the vehicles that were locked were not touched,” he added.
As Chris Waldroup continued searching the area, he noticed two men walking in the middle of the road on West Magnolia Street. Recognizing their clothing from a security video earlier that night, in which something was reported stolen from the Shell Food Mart, Chris Waldroup and Dillon Waldroup stopped and searched both men and found several phone chargers, a knife and a box of bullets on them.
One of the suspects, Ny’Kerion Smith, had an explanation for the items:
“Smith stated that only two of those chargers belonged to him. ... About the box of ammo, (he) stated that he had just located it on the railroad tracks prior to the officers’ arrival. ... and (he) admitted to finding a knife in the driveway of a residence, stating the knife was opened and that’s why he could see it from the road,” Waldroup wrote in his report.
When asked if he had entered any vehicles, the man first reportedly said “no,” then said he “didn’t know.” As the questioning continued, Smith said other people had done it, but those people had left.
Several of the victims came to the police department and identified the items that were taken from their vehicles, according to Cardwell.
Smith, 17, of Leo Street, Eatonton, was charged with seven counts of entering an automobile with intent to commit theft and was booked into Putnam County Jail.
The other suspect, who was not named because he is a juvenile, also received the same charges and was taken to YDC, Cardwell said. There was not enough evidence to charge them with the theft at the Shell station, he said.
“Once again, I am proud of the officers and the way they stayed on the case all night until they had all the details solved,” he added.