Possession of Marijuana

March 23 – A woman called police in regards to a domestic dispute. When officers arrived a girl told him her parents, who weren’t present at the time, were mistreating her and they were mean because they had taken away her car keys. One officer noticed the girl’s speech was slurred and her motor skills were slowed, but he did not smell alcohol; he says in the report he felt she must be under the influence of another kind of drug. The officer asked the girl if she had taken any medications and she told him she had taken some Klonopin for her nerves.

When the girl’s parents arrived, her mother spoke with one of the officers and told him her daughter became aggressive when she and her father tried to put the girl in the car and take her to Gateway Mental Hospital.

One officer asked the girl and her patents to stay with him while another questioned the girl’s boyfriend, who was present at the time of the incident. The officer noted in the report the boyfriend could hardly stand up while they were talking. The officer asked the man if he had any weapons on him and when he said no, the officer asked the man if he could search him. The man agreed and the officer felt something in the man’s front pants pocket that felt like a large knife. The man told the officer he didn’t know what the item was but that he could take it out. When the officer pulled out what he thought was a knife, a small bag of marijuana fell out of the man’s pocket. The man was arrested and checked out by EMS; they said he would be fine. EMS also checked out the girl and took her to Memorial Health in Savannah for a mental evaluation.

Before leaving, the girl told the officers that her father often touches her backside, and that when she was little he also touched her inappropriately.

March 24 – A Richmond Hill man called police in reference to a domestic dispute. When the officer arrived a man told him his girlfriend was mad at him and that she was spending the night in the trailer in front of the man’s house. The man said his girlfriend came into his home from the trailer at about 5:30 a.m. and began yelling at him. The man said the woman finally calmed down and lay on the bed with him. The man said the woman suddenly tried to bite his nose so he turned and she ended up biting him on the cheek. The report says the mark on the cheek looked more like a "hickey" than a bite mark. The man then said the woman grabbed some items from his home and went back to the trailer.

The officer talked with the man’s girlfriend and she said that she had been sleeping in the trailer when a train went by and woke her up, apparently because the back door was open. The woman said she went into her boyfriend’s house to ask him why he had left the back door open and they started arguing. She told the officer the man slammed her on the ground and hurt her back, but she declined to be checked out by EMS. She told the officer she wanted him to see the marks on her back but wouldn’t show them to him. When asked about what she had done to her boyfriend’s face, she told the officer she had given him a "hickey."

The woman then changed her story, telling the officer the man had come into the trailer and pulled her from the bed by her hair. The officer noted the woman’s hair was not messed up. The officer noticed the woman was unsteady on her feet and her demeanor was changing from hysterical to calm. She told the officer she was on several prescription drugs. The officer advised the couple to stay away from each other.

March 24 – An officer was sent to a home on Quail Road in Richmond Hill in reference to a 911 hang-up. When the officer arrived a man was standing in the front yard of the home and he told the officer he and his wife were having an argument which resulted in him calling 911. The man also said his wife had pulled the phone chord from the wall to prevent her husband from calling police. The man said his wife left the home and started walking down the road towards Hwy. 17.

The officer left the residence and searched for the man’s wife for 30 minutes, finding her coming out of the woods close to the highway. The woman told the officer she and her husband were arguing when he called 911 but that he had hung up before anyone answered. The officer asked her if she had pulled the phone chord from the wall and she said she did so after her husband called and then hung up. She said she pulled the chord from the wall to prevent her husband from calling her mother, who lives out of state. The officer arrested the woman and took her to the Bryan County Jail.

March 27 – An officer was patrolling Hwy. 144 at Steeple Chase Road when he heard the sound of a vehicle laying drag. He saw a truck speed away down Hwy. 144 and tried to catch up with it, observing the driver take curves at high rates of speed and cross the center line several times; the officer said his own speed exceeded 90 miles per hour as he pursued the truck.

The officer turned onto Co Op Road and saw the truck stopped in the middle of the road.

The officer turned on his blue lights and the driver of the truck drove to the shoulder of the road but did not stop, eventually turning down a trail off of the main road. The officer followed the truck down the trail which eventually led to the back of someone’s house. The driver pulled into the front of the house and exited the truck.

The officer pulled his gun and asked the man who was driving the truck to put his hands in the air and lay on the ground. The man refused and a woman from inside the house came out, yelling that she wanted to know what was going on.

The driver of the truck meanwhile was yelling that he knew Bryan County Sheriff Clyde Smith and that he had done nothing wrong. The officer asked the man again to lie on the ground and he did so. As the officer cuffed the man and took him to his patrol car he could smell alcohol coming from the man’s breath. The man told the officer that he was indeed drunk and the woman from the house yelled at the officer to turn off his blue lights.

After searching the truck the officer found a half-drank bottle of whiskey in the floorboard. After back-up arrived it was discovered the woman in the house was the mother of the man driving the truck. The man was charged with DUI, failure to maintain lane and attempting to flee an officer.