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The Blotter: Finders Keepers

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files

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Arrowheads A man filed a police report last week after he unexpectedly found the American equivalent of a buried treasure: a gun. The man told police he was doing surveying work near Robinson Church Road in east Charlotte when he hit something hard. He thought it was a rock at first, but the shape was a bit off as he uncovered it. The item turned out to be a .22-caliber rifle that had been buried at some unknown time.

Safety Check Employees at a daycare on Hickory Grove Road in east Charlotte called police last week after finding something strange on the playground that they couldn't find the owner of. Officers reported that the employees came across a case full of power tools lying under the playground. They turned the tools in to police, but I'm hoping that the next move they made was to check every single nut and bolt on that whole damn playground before letting another child on.

Lost Stash In another found property report, someone called police after finding a stash of drug paraphernalia along the side of a road that runs along the Catawba River in southwest Charlotte. The reporting person handed over to police a small black leather clutch that was holding 12 syringes, two spoons and a razor, all with drug residue on or in them. The designer clutch said, "Messy hair, don't care," on it, which is good, because now police have a description of the suspect who left it there.

Log Jam A 40-year-old woman in south Charlotte found some property on her lawn when she woke up one morning last week, but it wasn't a gun or a bag of drugs that she could just hand over to police. The woman said that some unknown suspect dumped a pile of giant logs onto her property, both in front of her porch and on both sides of her driveway. She said the logs were too large to move by hand and that she wanted to press charges against whomever it was that left them there.

Wasn't Me A 42-year-old man in east Charlotte proactively filed a report before any crime was committed, or alleged, for that matter. At some time around 10 a.m. one morning, the man called police and said he wanted to file a report because he "was concerned about getting in trouble by his girlfriend," according to the report. The man said he had been arguing with his girlfriend all night, and his concern was that she would take it upon herself to make false claims about him sometime soon, as she's apparently done in the past. So he wanted a report filed just to let police known on the record that he did not doing anything criminal during their argument and wasn't planning on doing anything criminal that day.

Citizen's Arrest A man in northwest Charlotte called police last week after one of his neighbors went a little too far in enforcing the leash law. The man told officers that he was standing at the top of his driveway with his dog, which was off the leash, when a man approached wearing a backpack. The suspect reached into the backpack and pulled a gun, pointed it at the victim and asked "for him to get his dog," according to the report.

Minimal ROI A 19-year-old woman living in the University area was the victim of a home break-in last weekend, but the thief made off with surprisingly little for all the effort they put into it. The woman told police that the suspect, whom she knew, broke in through the back window of her home using some sort of tool, then ransacked her entire living room. In the end, the suspect did steal some money from her — a whole dollar bill — before leaving the scene of the crime.

Drunk Driving Police responded to a Wendy's on Freedom Drive last week after a woman was holding up the drive-thru line and was found to be asleep when employees approached her car. Officers woke the woman up and found that — surprise! — she was intoxicated. In an unrelated incident, police were working the scene of a fatal accident on Brookshire Boulevard recently when a motorcycle suddenly appeared right in the middle of the crime scene. Officers reported that the motorcyclist drove past several patrol cars with their lights on and through the crime scene tape and suddenly found himself right among the investigators. Police would soon determine that — surprise! — the man on the motorcycle was impaired.

Third Time's a Charm A 37-year-old woman finally filed a police report last week after someone had apparently been targeting the front porch of her west Charlotte home for theft. The woman told police that someone stole a package containing front door mats last week, but that two other packages — one containing an iPhone case and the other a chrome door cover — had been stolen from her front porch within the last month. She said she didn't realize she should file a police report for these items until the third item went missing and someone told her that somebody was probably stealing them.