A reckless-driving
traffic stop on Sunday in Burns Harbor led to the arrest of a Portage man on
a charge of theft, the Porter County Sheriff’s Police said.
According to
police, at 2:44 p.m. a PCSP officer responded to the area of Ind. 149 and
U.S. Highway 20, where a BHPD officer had stopped a car driven by a juvenile
for reckless driving. Shortly after the traffic stop, a Valparaiso man
arrived at the scene to accuse one of the juvenile’s three passengers of
stealing $40 from his wallet, which he’d left in his vehicle at Pepe’s
Mexican Restaurant in South Haven while he’d walked to a nearby gas station.
The Valparaiso man
advised the PCSP officer that he saw a male subject wearing multi-colored
pants and a white hat lean “halfway inside” his vehicle through the open
passenger’s side window, then “quickly” exit the vehicle and run to a Kia,
which left Pepe’s. On checking his wallet, the man discovered two $20 bills
missing and proceeded to follow the Kia.
The man
subsequently identified the subject who’d leaned into his vehicle as Brandon
Goodman, 20, of 5185 Bell Ave., on whose person a BHPD officer did in fact
find two $20 bills, police said.
None of the other
three persons in the car stopped for reckless driving actually saw Goodman
take the money but the driver did say that Goodman “told him to stop at
Pepe’s so he could make some money” and that when another vehicle began
following him he became “scared and did not stop because he did not want to
get shot.”
Although Goodman
advised that his mother had given him the $40, the Valparaiso man told
officers that he folded his bills in “a very certain way”: “double folded
with the face of the bills folded inward.” The man demonstrated on a $1 bill
and, police said, the two $20 bills found in Goodman’s possession “were
folded in the exact same way.”
Goodman was
transported to Porter County Jail.