Drive-off with Shopping Cart Leads to Arrests

Milk, meat, cereal, soap, deodorant and shaving cream.

These items might show up on a typical grocery list, but to the Hiram Police Department, they are some of the items recovered in an investigation that has led to the potential solving of numerous car break-ins, which area authorities say involved three men and an estimated 100-plus vehicles they went through in Paulding and Cobb counties. .

Authorities have charged 21-year-old Clinton Bradley Gordon, 21-year-old Karac Fenimore Bennett and 18-year-old Ryan Thomas Haines in connection with the thefts from vehicles and the purchase of items with credit cards taken in the thefts. According to jail records retrieved Saturday, all three men face currently three counts of financial card theft and two counts of entering an auto with intent to commit theft.

The arrests happened July 21 after Hiram Police investigated the three following some suspicious behavior witnessed by Hiram Police Lt. Brian Acree, who spoke with Dallas-Hiram Patch last week.

Acree said what immediately appeared odd to him was the “odd clothing” the three wore as they left the Hiram Walmart the afternoon of July 21 with two shopping carts full of merchandise. Another detail was that the truck they soon left in was parked not in Walmart’s parking lot, but in a lot shared by a few nearby businesses.

“One of them had a winter hat on that was covering his ears … [another] had on a Barney hat and a pair of Elton John sunglasses on over his eyes. The other guy was wearing a funny-looking cowboy hat, and he had funny-looking sunglasses on too,” Acree said, adding that he would follow the Chevrolet truck the three got into after loading it up with merchandise and one of the two shopping carts they had used.

Acree pulled the three over off Highway 278 before the truck left the city limits. A search of the truck revealed a wallet containing several cards with different names on them, which would lead to the three’s arrest for financial transaction card fraud.

After three hours of interviews, one of three admitted that they had broken into more than 120 automobiles within the last two weeks within Cobb and Paulding counties, taking electronic equipment, two 9mm handguns and more, Acree said. He added that one of the men said some taken items had been pawned in Douglasville, while some of the others were sold on street for cash.

“We asked if they were breaking into [the vehicles]. They said, ‘No, we didn’t break anything. We just pulled on the door handles, and if the door opened, we went through the vehicle,” Acree said. “There is going to be a lot of people out there that don’t know their vehicles were rummaged through because they were left unlocked. So my advice to everyone is to keep always your car locked, and if you have an alarm, set it.”

Acree said investigators have found that some of the taken cards were used to buy merchandise at the Walmart stores in Hiram and Dallas, gift cards at in Hiram, and purchases at gas stations.

In addition to the aforementioned grocery items, other merchandise recovered by Hiram Police that had been bought from Walmart using one of the taken credit cards included LEGO sets, clothing, beer, posters and lights.