Chesterton Tribune

 

 

PCSP: Reckless driving stop leads to theft charge

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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.

 

Posted 11/9/2015

 
 
 
 

 

 

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