Another Little Town crime edition.  Really, sometimes they make it so easy.  These stories recently appeared in Citizen-Times, our remotely-published “local” Gannett newspaper.

Man assaults officer with metal wash board

Now, this is not a laughing matter, but where else would this happen but in the heart of Appalachia USA?    The text of the article did not go into detail on the washboard incident (which took place at the County Jail) but it did say that the perpetrator, one Jason Smith, was charged with “assaulting a government official with a deadly weapon.”  It gets better:

Earlier in the evening, as Smith was being arrested by two Asheville Police Officers, he refused to get on the ground and place his hands behind his back, warrants state.  He attempted to hit officers with a large piece of cardboard and threw it to the ground in the middle of the street.  Officers charged Smith with resisting a public officer and littering, which are both considered misdemeanors, according to court documents.

That littering charge is going to be especially hard to beat here in Asheville.  I hope Smith has a good lawyer.  And I hope that whoever left a washboard out in plain sight at the County Jail, where anyone could pick it up and use it to attack someone, will learn to be more responsible with deadly weapons.

Asheville man charged with several area break-ins

Joshua Frantz, a South Asheville man, was jailed by the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office after being accused of breaking into a number of homes on the very street he lives on.  According to the article, Frantz “took more than $5,000 and $4,000 in valuables from his neighbors.”  (Note to Citizen-Times: $5000 and $4000 usually adds up to $9000.)  But there is much, much more to this story.  I am reposting a sizable portion of it here, so that it will not be lost to the winds of internet time:

A deputy interviewed a woman at one residence who said someone was in her house, and when she came out of the bathroom the person ran out through the backdoor, warrants state.  The woman told a deputy that her boyfriend had gotten a better look at the person.  The deputy then spoke to Frantz, who lived with the woman.

Frantz described the man as having the “same build as him but had hair and inch or two long.  He also said that he was wearing orange shorts and carrying a backpack that had red or orange on it,” warrants state.

Deputies searched the couple’s home and surrounding outside areas.  They saw a pair of black gloves sitting on the countertop in the living room, a crowbar lying on the patio table in the backyard and a backpack that appeared to have red or orange on it.

In the bathroom Frantz had been in, a deputy saw what appeared to be a towel filled with hair as if someone had just gotten a haircut, warrants state.  Hair was on the sink and all around the bathroom.   A pair of orange shorts also had been thrown on the floor in the basement, according to warrants.

When deputies went back outside the house, they noticed Frantz was wearing a cap and his scalp was white appearing to have just been shaved, warrants state. He also had some “random longer hairs on his neck and around his head that I believed would be consistent with a quick cut,” according to warrants.

After piecing details together and obtaining evidence, authorities named Frantz as the person who had broken into neighboring residences stealing various items.

I don’t know if reporter Abigail Margulis intended her story to be quite so entertaining, but I would find it hard to write this account with a straight face.  It would have been fun to be in the newsroom (in whatever city that may be) when her editor reviewed it.

As for Mr. Frantz’s neighbors, the lesson to be learned is this: if you can’t trust the guy who lives next door, you better hope that he is either very stupid or a bad liar, or both.