An Arrest May Have Prevented Another Crime

An Athens Clarke County Police officer made an early morning arrest on Sunday of a young man whom he thought was sizing up a potential robbery victim. And he subsequently learned the young man had stolen a cell phone earlier in the evening.

According to a story in the Athens Banner Herald, around 2:15am on Sunday, ACC Police Officer Daniel Whitney arrested 17-year-old Amos Kipkorir Chumba of Lexington Road for violating curfew. He had watched Chumba and a friend, 18-year-old Demontrea Jermain Smith of Candler Road, sizing up an intoxicated man at the corner of Broad and Lumpkin.

The officer watched the two teens move to the UGA campus, the story says, and hide behind the columns of the UGA Chapel, where an intoxicated woman was sitting on the steps and talking on her cell phone. When Officer Whitney spoke to Chumba and learned he was 17, he arrested him for curfew violation.

When a backup officer arrived, he searched the teenager and found a cell phone that a 25-year-old Eatonton woman had missed about an hour earlier, the story says. The woman identified Chumba as the person who had snatched her phone from her back pocket, the story says, and he admitted doing so.

Besides violating curfew, the story says Chumba was also charged with robbery, and loitering or prowling, and Smith was also charged with loitering or prowling.

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