Dropped cell phone leads police to alleged beer thief
The proliferation of cellular telephones has been a crime-fighting boon for police.
Just this week, a Spokane Valley convenience store robbery was solved because a man making a beer run had a cell phone with him. He was running from the clerk when he dropped it, police said.
“I’m making a beer run,” Jeremy Blaine Dafler, 19, allegedly told the clerk when she asked where he thought he was going with two 18-count packs of beer he hadn’t purchased, according to police Sgt. Dave Reagan.
Reagan said Spokane Valley police quickly found Dafler in the Sunday night robbery at the Zip Trip at Fourth Avenue and Sullivan Road when they started calling people in the phone’s directory.
Officers found Dafler hiding in a dark corner of a backyard at 14219 E. 17th Ave., Reagan said. They also found two 18-count beer cartons and a lot of empties.
Dafler was cited and released on a third-degree theft count.
Woman jailed on ID theft charge
A 23-year-old Spokane Valley woman was arrested this week when she allegedly used a stolen driver’s license to evade a police officer.
Cpl. Mark Fox went to a home in the 4600 block of North Burns Road Sunday to look for Cristal Charleen Cox, who was wanted on warrants charging domestic assault and escape from community custody.
But the woman who answered the door produced a driver’s license and a traffic ticket showing she was someone else. The license photo resembled the woman, so Fox left empty-handed.
Then, according to spokesman Sgt. Dave Reagan, Fox got a tip that he had been duped and that Cox was on her way to a grocery store. Fox found her at the store and determined she was using a driver’s license stolen in a car theft last October.
Reagan said Fox planned to ask the county prosecutor’s office to dismiss the traffic infractions Cox racked up for the theft victim.
Cox was booked into jail on suspicion of second-degree identity theft as well as the warrants.
Edgecliff couple arrested on meth charges
An Edgecliff couple were arrested Wednesday morning on suspicion of selling methamphetamine from the garage in which they lived.
Mitchell A. Davis, 25, was booked into jail on one count of possession of methamphetamine with intent to delivery, but additional charges were pending, according to Sgt. Dave Reagan, the Spokane Valley police spokesman.
Reagan said Aimee M. Paul, 37, was booked on one count of methamphetamine possession. Detectives found a small amount of the drug in the garage, he said.
Davis’ mother and two children live in a manufactured home on the same lot but weren’t involved in the drug investigation, Reagan said. He didn’t release the address.
Dog used to apprehend car theft suspect
A Spokane Valley police officer found he was following a stolen car Wednesday night near Sprague and Bowdish when he checked the license.
Officer Todd Saunders tried to stop the 1991 Honda Accord, but the driver sped away and dodged in and out of parking lots and around businesses in the University City area, Sgt. Dave Reagan said.
“Having to slow for obstructions that the suspect simply flew over, the officer eventually lost sight of the stolen car” when it went north on Raymond Road, Reagan said.
But Saunders spotted the car abandoned in an apartment parking lot at 300 N. Raymond, and witnesses pointed a police dog team in the direction the suspect ran.
The dog found 23-year-old Corey A. Pace hiding under drooping tree limbs at 10600 E. Nixon Lane, and Saunders pulled him out. Pace resisted and got bitten, Reagan said.
Pace, of 216 N. Skipworth Road, was booked on suspicion of car theft and eluding – after treatment for his bite.
Three burglary suspects arrested
Three suspects were quickly arrested in an early morning burglary Thursday at a Spokane Valley Radio Shack store.
People who lived in the area flagged down Spokane Valley police Officer Scott Streltzoff with descriptions of the burglars when he responded to a 3:42 a.m. alarm.
The witnesses said the suspects broke out glass doors at the store at 13516 E. Sprague Ave. and put a big box into a white Chevrolet bearing Montana license plates.
Sgt. Dave Reagan, the department spokesman, said the suspects passed Streltzoff while he was looking for them near Mission Avenue and McDonald Road.
Reagan said Streltzoff followed the car to an apartment parking lot, where the driver and a passenger ran away despite being ordered to remain in the vehicle.
Streltzoff and Officer Chuck Sciortino arrested the other passenger, Michael Francis Kreuch, 25, of 2307 W. Boone Ave. in Spokane.
Officer Jason Karnitz chased down the driver and subdued him with a Taser, and Officer Todd Saunders found the third suspect, a 17-year-old Spokane boy, Reagan said.
He didn’t identify the youth, but said the driver was Ike Scott Smith, 25, a Spokane transient.
The suspects were booked into the county jail and juvenile detention center on suspicion of second-degree burglary and second-degree theft.
Reagan said the officers found in the suspects’ car a large-screen television, several DVD players, batteries, GPS navigation systems and digital cameras worth more than $1,500.