Georgia man sets car on fire because, as he tells cops, ‘I didn’t like it’
An emergency call went out shortly after daybreak at a house near High Falls lake in northern Monroe County. There was, in the parlance of police officers and firefighters, “a vehicle fire.” By the time a fire truck got there, the blaze was out. A sheriff’s deputy would later note in a report that “the vehicle was located in the back yard of the residence.” It was there that the deputy spoke to a 47-year-old man who said his father, 67, had ignited the automobile. The deputy went on to write in his account of the 7:15 a.m. episode on July 24 that he asked the father why he had set fire to the black 2002 Acura TL. “He said that he didn’t like the car,” the report said. “I asked how he started the fire and he started searching his pocket for his lighter. When asked where (on the car) he started the fire, (the man) stated the steering wheel.” It was unclear why the fellow was not fond of the car. He was, however, “based on his demeanor and responses,” examined by medics, who deemed him OK.
Dispatches: There was a burglary reported at a house on Old Cork Road. The owner of the house, which lies south of Flovilla in northern Monroe County, told the cops in late July that someone he knows went into his garage and, as an incident report noted, “stole two beers out of his refrigerator.” The resident went on to say that the person also “picked up his pellet gun and started shooting it in the garage.” The resident didn’t want to press charges, he just wanted the offending party to stay away. . . . As noted in last week’s column, this newspaper for a time in the mid-1880s published “Police Points,” a feature not unlike this one which describes oddities and curiosities as seen through the eyes of law enforcers. In early April 1886, the column mentioned, among other items, that a man “who got on a howling drunk on Third Street Monday afternoon was sentenced to pay a fine of five dollars.” Another item told how “Jim Buchanan, station house keeper, reads the Telegraph, advertisements and all. He is an efficient officer and obliging in every way to the newspaper boys. When he has any news the boys get it, and he seems to take pleasure in dishing out the news of the day in the most attractive style.”