DISCHARGE OF A FIREARM: A Barrow deputy responded to an Old Hog Mountain Road house around 7 p.m. Jan. 10 to talk with a man who was shooting into the ground trying to scare off a beer thief.

The man’s nephew called 911 after he and his uncle and got into an argument over the nephew’s attempt to help himself to one of the man’s beers.

As the nephew was driving off, he heard his uncle fire two shots. He called 911 because his uncle was drunk and he was worried about his safety.

A deputy responded a short time later and told the uncle that he did not need to play with his guns if he had been drinking. The uncle explained that he was just trying to scare off his nephew.

THEFT: A deputy arrested a 25-year-old Winder man on Jan. 13 and charged him with theft after he allegedly took a used iPhone, valued at $120, from the video game trade-in store where he worked.

The store’s manager remembered someone trading in the iPhone on Jan. 7 but noticed it was missing from the store’s storage box when he went to check it into inventory on Jan. 9. The store’s surveillance video showed the 25-year-old reaching into the box and removing it. He returned the phone when his manager confronted him.

SHOPLIFTING: A Monroe mother and son were caught attempting to shoplift more than $600 worth of merchandise from Target on Loganville Highway on Jan. 13.

A loss-prevention officer watched as the woman’s 18-year-old son acted as a lookout while she loaded her shopping cart and several of Target’s reusable shopping bags with items from around the store and then simply walked out of the store.

They both face felony shoplifting charges.

THEFT: An 81-year-old Winder man called the sheriff’s office around 6:20 p.m. on Jan. 13 to report that his black triangle-shaped dinner bell had been stolen from the front porch of his house on Georgia Highway 211.

The metal triangle, which measures 20 inches on each side, is worth $600, the man told deputies.

The man who created it at Crowe’s Foundry has died, and the bell is irreplaceable, he told the deputy.

THEFT: A Doc McLocklin Road man realized on Jan. 14 that someone had taken his 16-foot utility trailer off of his property in Statham.
The trailer, valued at $1,200, did not have a tag but had diamond plate metal flooring and slick tires, the man told a deputy. The last time he remembers seeing it in the yard was on Dec. 14.

AGGRAVATED ASSAULT: A deputy arrested a 21-year-old Grayson man on Jan. 17 after he removed a man from his sister’s house at gun point.

He had stopped by her Twin Lakes Road home because his mom wanted him to check on her. The family had heard she had been in the hospital because she was having an adverse reaction to some methamphetamine.

The man who was in her house had taken her to the hospital that morning and taken her son to school, he said. The woman was disoriented and had asked the man to hide under her bed when her brother knocked on the door.

The brother found him hiding there, and she didn’t seem to be able to explain to her brother who the man was. The brother chased him out of the house at gunpoint and was later arrested on a charge of aggravated assault.

SHOPLIFTING: A deputy arrested a 47-year-old Winder woman around 7 p.m. Jan. 17 after Walmart employees caught her trying to smuggle $92 worth of merchandise out of the store without paying for it.

She was hiding the items in her purse, according to the store’s loss-prevention officer.

THEFT: A 53-year-old man reported that someone took about $1,000 in auto parts from the trunk of his Ford Mustang while it was parked a mechanic’s shop on Harry McCarty Road.

He had left his car at the shop so the mechanic could fix it but he never did, he told a deputy. He wanted to file a theft report because he believes the mechanic stole the alternator and intake manifold that he provided for him.

The man wanted to file a police report so he would have documentation of the missing parts when he took the mechanic to court.

THEFT: A real estate agent went on Jan. 18 to check on a foreclosed house on Pathfinder Place in Hoschton. He found that someone had taken all of the wiring from inside the house and the gutters from outside.

The thieves caused about $5,000 in damage to the walls of the house. It would cost about $10,000 to replace the wiring and about $2,000 to replace the gutters, he told a deputy.

THEFT: A 51-year-old Lexington woman was arrested on Jan. 18 at Target on Loganville Highway after a store employee caught her concealing about $200 worth of merchandise in her purse.

She was arrested on a charge of shoplifting and barred from the store.

THEFT: A deputy arrested a 42-year-old Winder man on Jan. 18 after the loss-prevention officer saw him try to smuggle at $30 computer cable out of the store in his shoe.

When the deputy dropped him off at the Barrow County Detention Center he found a watch stuffed between the cushions of his patrol cruiser. The loss-prevention officer confirmed that Target sold that type of watch. When she checked the security tape, she found that he had taken the watch as well.

THEFT: A Loganville handyman went to check on a foreclosed property that he was looking after on Bee Maxey Road on Jan. 19 and found that thieves has cut the wiring out of the attic, cut the copper pipes out of the crawl space and taken both the furnace and air conditioner from the house.

In total, the thieves caused about $11,500 worth of damage. The handyman wasn’t sure when the damage had occurred, and a deputy could not tell if there had been forced entry into the house because it was in such bad shape.

THEFT: A Stonegate Drive woman returned home from work on Jan. 19 to find her laundry room door open and both of her flatscreen TVs — a 42 inch Samsung and a 40 inch Sony — missing from her house.

A deputy found that the burglars had probably broken one of her windows to get inside the house and then left through the laundry room door. They followed footprints from the house into woods.

The TVs were worth about $1,248, she told a deputy.