Police Blotter
Police catch man who escaped from squad car
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A Harlem man was captured Wednesday after a two-hour manhunt that followed his escape from the back of a police car.
Frank Calvin Coe, 25, of the 800 block of County Line Road, was charged with escape, driving with a suspended driver's license, possession of drug-related objects and a registration violation. He was being held in the Columbia County Detention Center on Friday without bond, according to jail records.
Coe was taken into custody and handcuffed after a traffic stop near Harlem, police said. He managed to get out of the police car while authorities searched his pickup. A sheriff's office tracking dog helped police find him in the woods.
Suspect is arrested in break-in at pharmacy
A Martinez man was arrested Wednesday, accused in Monday's break-in at a Wrightsboro Road pharmacy.
Caleb John Schafner, 22, faces a burglary charge, said Richmond County sheriff's Sgt. Horace Anderson. Schafner is suspected of cutting a hole in the roof of Summerville Pharmacy and stealing an unknown amount of hydrocodone, according to police. Anderson said the pharmacy has been broken into four times and police are continuing to question Schafner about those incidents.
The following accounts were taken from reports from the Columbia County Sheriff's Office. Additional reports are available at www.columbiacountyso.org:
Drug store manager reports theft of drugs
The manager of a Martinez Rite Aid store called police Monday after discovering that nearly $140 worth of over-the-counter pain medication was missing.
The manager of the store at 337 Furys Ferry Road said that between 3 and 3:30 p.m., a man and woman were acting suspiciously. When they left, the manager said, he was able to discern that two boxes of Tylenol, worth about $30, and six boxes of Aleve, worth more than $100, were missing from the store shelves.
The manager said the couple got into a white Cadillac and backed out of the parking lot. A witness told police she saw the car and got the North Carolina tag number, but a police check revealed no such tag existed.
Two men charged with breaking into home
Two Martinez men were arrested Tuesday after they were caught breaking into an Evans home, police said.
Dominick Dean Watterson, 20, and Patrick Joseph Lanier, 17, both of Melrose Drive, were charged with criminal trespass. They were being held Friday in the Columbia County Detention Center on $1,100 bonds, according to jail records.
A woman told police she saw three men looking through windows at a home across the street. The men then came to her door, claimed someone who lived there had some of their belongings and asked to use the phone to call the residents of the house.
When two of the men, later identified as Watterson and Lanier, went back across the street and jumped the fence into the backyard of the house, the woman called police. The third man stayed out front.
The woman said she soon saw Watterson and Lanier come out the front door.
The resident of the house told police Watterson had briefly lived there but had no belongings left. When he moved out two months ago, the woman said, Watterson was told not to return to the property.
The third man was not charged.
Delivered package is returned opened
A Martinez woman called police Tuesday after she said a juvenile returned an opened DHL package to her.
The 43-year-old said that when she got home about 3:30 p.m., the juvenile brought the box to her house. It supposedly had contained a laptop computer case, a mouse and software.
The boy told her he had found the box on a nearby street ripped open with only the laptop case inside.