Crime briefs
Vendor arrested at York’s Summerfest, accused of trashing cotton candy stand
Police made an arrest during Summerfest on Saturday after a dispute between vendors led a man to trash a cotton candy stand.
A Maryland man was charged with disorderly conduct after he reportedly cursed at two women in a booth on North Roosevelt Street and began jerking cotton candy out of their display, according to an incident report.
The incident was reported by a couple who were standing in line for cotton candy with their 5-year-old daughter when they became frightened by the man’s behavior and left the area.
A 45-year-old woman behind the cotton candy stand corroborated the story, saying the man screamed “(expletive) yourself because no one else sure will,” then pulled out several items of cotton candy and left.
The officer then spoke to the 58-year-old suspect, who was manning another vendor’s stand nearby. He explained that earlier in the day he and the cotton candy vendors had agreed to exchange some of his food items for their cotton candy, and the woman later left two bags of cotton candy with another man at the food stand.
Apparently dissatisfied with the amount of cotton candy he had received, the man went back to the cotton candy stand to get more. He said he had the permission of another man working at the cotton candy booth to take the items, and told the officer he “mouthed the words he was accused of saying, but did not say the words out loud.”
The man was issued a summons for disorderly conduct, and was quickly booked and released from the nearby York police station.
Man charged with theft of $100 in change, $2,000 in equipment from Clover church
A Clover man was arrested last week after more than $100 in donated change and about $2,000 in musical instruments and computer equipment was stolen from a Clover church, according to Clover police.
The break in at Clover Liberty Pentecostal Church at 106 Price St. was reported Sunday morning Aug. 16 by church members who noticed the missing items.
The theft included about $100 in change from donation jars placed around the church, police said. Church leaders told police the stolen items included two keyboards, two bass guitars and a string guitar, guitar pedals and computer equipment, including two computer monitors.
Eric Colon Moore Jr., 25, of 404 Guinn St., Clover, was arrested Aug. 20 in Stanley, N.C. He was waiting be extradited to South Carolina, said Clover police Lt. M.T. Davis.
Davis said Moore, who was being held at the Gaston County Detention Center, will be charged with burglary and larceny in connection with the Clover theft.
Davis said the church sanctuary was burglarized the night of Aug. 15 by someone who forced open a back door, and the power was shut off to the building.
Church leaders made a list of the missing items, and police began calling pawn shops the next day. Davis said one shop in Gastonia, N.C., reported that a man had tried to sell some items that matched the list of those the church reported missing.
“They said it didn’t feel right to them, so they didn’t buy it,” Davis said.
Davis said he watched a video from the Gastonia pawn shop of the attempted sale and recognized Moore from Clover. “We were able to find other property at other pawn shops in Gastonia once we knew what we were looking for,” he said.
He said witnesses helped police find Moore in Stanley, where he was arrested with the help of Stanley police. Davis said all the missing property was recovered, except for the change.
Woman invites stranger to York home for drinks, wakes up with black eyes
A woman told York police that she invited two strangers over to her house for drinks and woke up the next day with two black eyes.
A 46-year-old woman reported the incident after she says she met a man and woman at a Dollar Tree store on Aug. 17 and invited them back to her North Congress Street home for drinks, according to the incident report. She told the officer she didn’t know either of the persons’ names.
Once back at the house, the woman says she had two small drinks, which she said each had only a 5 percent alcohol content, but then began to feel “extremely drunk” and “fall a lot.” She believes one of the two strangers put something in her drink.
She said she couldn’t clearly remember all the details of the evening, but she “does recall having to tell the male party to stop touching her several times,” the report states. The next day, the woman had dark bruising around both of her eyes.
She doesn’t think the man punched her, she said, but she may have been pushed or fallen into something.
The woman “was vague at best on details of the conversation which led to them coming back to her house,” according to the report. She was evaluated by EMS and asked to complete a victim’s form.
York man counting money on payday robbed at gunpoint
A Sharon man told York police he was robbed at gunpoint while sitting in his car in a parking lot and counting his money after getting paid.
The 21-year-old man said he was robbed Aug. 20 around 5:30 p.m. after getting paid for the week. He parked his car in a lot on the 300 block of South Congress Street and began counting the money, looking for smaller change so he could purchase a pack of cigarettes.
When he looked up, the victim said he saw a man with dreadlocks in his early 20s pointing a gun at his head, demanding the money. The driver handed the gunman about $400 in cash, and the robber ran on foot toward California Street, according to the incident report.
The man said a woman pumping gas identified the gunman and told him the man was a member of the Bloods gang, but he wasn’t able to remember the name.
Later, the victim posted his story on Facebook and asked for help identifying the gunman. He said someone sent him a link to a Facebook profile, and he identified the man as the robber who stole his payday money. He then shared the information with the police.
This story was originally published August 20, 2015 at 3:53 PM with the headline "Crime briefs."