From Richmond Hill Police Department reports:

Assault: Police were sent to the Exxon on Highway 144 at the I-95 exit on April 30 after a clerk was assaulted for telling a man not to smoke while he was pumping gas. The victim said a man came into the store buy cigarettes and gas, then went outside and began smoking while he was pumping gas into his motorcycle. The victim said he told the man, who had a Midway address and was gone when the cops got there, not to smoke and one thing led to another. The man pushed him, he pushed back and then at some point the man put him in a choke hold, etc. The victim, who was taken by EMS to the hospital, was able to get a tag number and the attacker was identified. An alert was put out to surrounding areas and video evidence was to be collected, with an arrest pending the view of that.

Criminal trespass: An Ashton Place woman reported April 24 someone damaged her rear windshield. “In looking at her vehicle, I noticed someone had thrown a metal residential water gauge cover through her rear windshield,” the officer reported.

A man told the officer he saw the damage the night before, but didn’t report it because he figured the owner would find it in the morning. The woman was told a report would be on file for her insurance.

Damage to vehicle: A Statesboro man reported April 29 he was driving south on I-95 and had just passed Exit 90 when something hit his driver’s side front window, “then the window shattered.” There was no other damage. The man got a report for insurance.

Matter of record: An officer was patrolling Highway 144 near Fish Street around 9 p.m. April 29 when he spotted a car stopped in the center turn lane with its four-way hazard lights on. The officer pulled alongside and “could see the driver was upset,” so he stopped, called dispatch and then pulled in behind the vehicle. There he met with the driver, a woman, who was “visibly upset, border hysterical,” the report said.

The woman was having a medical emergency and was on the cell with her mother. The officer called EMS and the woman was taken to the hospital while her car was parked by the library.

Obstruction, drugs, etc: A man from out of town was arrested April 29 after a sequence of events that began when an officer spotted the man turning into the Days Inn parking lot and heading to the back. A run of the man’s license plate revealed he didn’t have insurance, and the officer spotted a spoon “covered with a brown residue sitting in between the passenger seat and the door of the vehicle.”

In addition, the man “appeared to be extremely nervous.” He allegedly told the officer he uses the spoon to mix Kratom with a beverage. The National Institute on Drug Abuse website said Kratom is a tropical tree with leaves that can have mind-altering effects.

Eventually, the officer found evidence that the man was probably snorting a white powder through a straw and rolled up $1 bills as well as prescription pill bottles belonging to the man’s wife and a glass pipe. At some point, the man tried to run, and both he and the officer fell more than once during the chase into a nearby parking lot before help arrived and the man was arrested and taken to jail. The car was released to his wife, who was able to show proof of insurance.

Matter of record: A woman called RHPD on April 30 to report her pregnant, adult daughter was missing.

The woman said she hadn’t heard from her daughter in two weeks and was worried.

She told an officer that shortly after her daughter left to go with her boyfriend to attend the funeral of one of his family members in another state, she called “and explained that she no longer wanted anything to do with them.”

The woman said her daughter’s pregnancy has caused a strain on the relationship. She also said she is “periodically” told by the mother of her daughter’s boyfriend that her daughter is well. The woman also said her daughter recently dropped out of school and may have moved in with her boyfriend, who is only 15.

The officer said he began to think the daughter isn’t missing and the woman simply wants her daughter to come home. He offered to check at the boyfriend’s home to see if she was OK, and the mother “seemed upset and confused as to why I would not arrest her daughter for the allegations of statutory rape,” the officer reported. “I explained (to her) that I would need more than her allegations to make such a charge ….” He also said if the allegations were true “we would follow where such an investigation would lead to.”

During his time on duty the officer checked “periodically” at the boyfriend’s address but didn’t find anyone at home.

Matter of record: A woman reported April 30 she recently “noticed that certain items in her apartment appear to be missing.”

The items she reported missing were three sets of drapes, a Persian rug, doggie diapers, groceries, custom jewelry and a paint easel.

The woman said she thinks someone is coming in and doesn’t know when the thefts occurred but she moved in at the beginning of April.

There were no signs of forced entry. The woman said she’s the only one on her hallway and sometimes she hears teens running down and “sliding something between the top of her door and the frame.”

On May 4, she told the officer she learned more things were missing, including a box with five purses inside worth $100 each, a Playstation 2 console, a pink iPod, a digital camera, and two kitchen floor mats.

Drugs, etc: An officer patrolling Highway 17 around 11 p.m. April 30 saw a car behind him with a headlight that wasn’t working. He pulled over and let it pass, and then saw that it didn’t have a tag on the back, so he pulled it over and “could smell the odor of marijuana emitting from within the vehicle,” the report said, noting the officer also “detected the strong odor of a perfume fragrance commonly used to cover the scent of narcotics.”

The driver, who said she had recently bought the car from someone in South Carolina using Facebook, was asked if there was pot in the vehicle and the woman said no and that she didn’t smoke marijuana. A passenger, however, said there was marijuana in a cigarette pack that had been given her by her brother.

During a search, the officer found the pot. He also found “a small amount of crack cocaine lodged deep under the driver seat between the carpet and the frame.”

The officer said it “was apparent … that the crack cocaine had been its position for an extended period of time. Knowing that (the woman) had recently purchased the vehicle and no indicators of crack cocaine usage, I determined that crack cocaine was most likely lost and abandoned by the previous owner of the vehicle.”

The car had insurance. The woman was cited for no tag and given a verbal warning for the headlight. The passenger was charged with possession less than an ounce, however. The crack belonging to a previous owner of the car was taken to be logged in as evidence and then destroyed.

Kidnapping, assault: A woman told police she was eating supper around 5:30 p.m. May 1 when she heard her dog barking “out back” but didn’t see anything. Five minutes later, she heard a woman screaming “please help me,” and “please help me get away,” then saw a woman trying to climb a fence. She said she dialed 911 while the woman’s husband said something to the effect his wife was trying to “act like the victim,” and then left.

The officer said the wife appeared to be in a bad way and told him she and her husband had been arguing for hours, but it escalated and got violent and she bit his hand to get free and ran outside and saw her neighbor, who called police. The man had driven away, and officers on duty were asked to be on the lookout for him. Photos were taken of the wife’s injuries, and she was given information for victims and a case number.

Matter of record: An officer was sent May 2 to a man’s home because the man told him he got a letter from Bryan County Animal Control that appeared to be fake. The man said he called animal control and was told they didn’t send the letter. The officer checked out the letter and it was obviously a fake, but claimed the agency had received a complaint of cruelty to animals.

“It appeared that someone had taken a Bryan County form with a letter head and then covered the rest of the form with the letter before making a copy and sending it off,” the officer reported.

The man said he was worried someone was trying to cause problems and told the officer he’s been having ongoing “civil issues with the HOA.” It worried him someone “is claiming actual criminal issues were occurring at his residence.”

The man showed the officer his pets, “which were clearly well taken care of and behaved,” and the man asked a report be made “just to document the incident and his animal’s conditions.” The officer told the man he should take the letter to animal control in case they wanted to look into it.

Domestic: Police were dispatched around 10 p.m. May 2 to a home where a couple were arguing and both had called 911. The husband said the argument began when he learned his wife was sending nude photos of herself to other men. The man said he was talking to his sister about his wife’s affairs when she overheard, grabbed his cell phone and threw it, cracking the screen. The woman said they were arguing and when she grabbed the phone he kicked her in the chest. There were no signs of injuries and she declined EMS when offered.

The couple’s 10-year-old son said he was in his room with the door closed and heard them yelling but didn’t know what it was about. Nobody was arrested, but Child Protective Services was notified.

Matter of record: An officer was called to the Wetlands Center in J.F. Gregory Park shortly before 8 a.m. May 5 by the city’s assistant parks director, who wanted him to see it had been trashed. The man said it had been rented by a woman for a 15th birthday party, and “the center was left in dismay with trash and empty alcoholic beverage bottles that included, Corona, Heineken, Grand Old Par, and Buchanan’s Master.”

Also, plaques on the walls had been punctured and food was left open in the kitchen.

The woman who rented it showed up around 8:45 a.m. to explain why it hadn’t been cleaned, then got her stuff and left. She had signed a contract that she’d clean the facility or lose the cleaning deposit.

What’s more, a church group had rented the place for a service at 9 a.m. and wouldn’t be able to use it due to the mess.

The woman and the assistant park manager were given a case number and told how to get a copy of the report.

Shoplifting: An officer was sent to Love’s Truck Stop on May 6 regarding a habitual shoplifter. There, he met the boss, who said he’d been told of a man who was shoplifting at different Loves. The man said he then saw a man shoplifting on security video. The man came in the day earlier to return an antenna priced at $44.49.

“Shortly thereafter, around 2054 hours, (he) can be seen on surveillance footage take two items off of the shelf, located near the cooler, and conceal them in his cargo

pocket.”

They were antennas, worth $44.99 each, and they were later returned at a Love’s in Jacksonville.

The man has a membership with Love’s Truck Stop, and store employees were able to ID him that way. The officer was unable to get hold of the man by phone, but it’s clear he’ll probably have some questions to answer soon, somewhere.

Matter of record: Finally, this from a May 6 report in which a woman said she was backing out of a fast food restaurant when her car was nearly hit by another. “Due to this action, (the woman) said she threw her hands up.”

When she went to park, the “same vehicle pulled up next to her vehicle,” and an argument followed in which the driver, described as a skinny young white guy, threatened to killer her. She told him where she’d be and he then “threw a drink at the rear of her vehicle leaving residue all down the back.”

“(She) also advised that during this confrontation she used a few choice words herself,” the report said.

The woman said she wanted the incident reported

for documentation.