The Blotter September 01 2011

Near Underground Atlanta, an officer got a call about a possible accident involving a person in a wheelchair. The driver of the car — a blue Lexus — said he was near a traffic light when he saw a man in a wheelchair trying to cross Alabama Street. Suddenly, he said, the wheelchair-bound man started rolling backward, got stuck on a manhole cover and his wheelchair tipped over. The driver said he got out of his car to see if the guy was OK, and the disabled man replied, “You hit me, give me $20 and you can leave. I will not call the police.”

Not impressed with the offer, the driver called 911. Several witnesses said the Lexus did not hit the wheelchair man, and that he’d fallen over because of the manhole. Medics arrived, but the wheelchair man refused any sort of medical treatment. He just rolled away on his own.

DYNAMIC DUO: A 31-year-old woman said she was almost assaulted — for no apparent reason — while she was strolling along Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard one afternoon. She was near a bank when she saw a man and woman walking together. The woman said she was talking on her cell phone and the couple moved apart as she got closer. She said the man pulled back and took a swing at her, but she dodged the blow by raising her arm and ducking. Then the couple ran behind a nearby Krispy Kreme and drove away in a small silver car. The woman wasn’t hurt and said she’d never met the couple before in her life.

She described the dynamic duo as follows: The male suspect weighs as much as 350 pounds and is up to 6-foot-5-inches tall. The female suspect wore a red jumper and had “wild hair or a bad weave.”

HIGH SCHOOL DAZE: At around 2:30 a.m., an officer saw two people inside a silver Lexus at a gas station on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. As the officer approached, he saw the driver, a 26-year-old Marietta man, trying to “place something either in his right pocket or underneath his right leg.”

The officer asked whether the man had a driver’s license and why he was just sitting there. The driver motioned to the passenger and said, “He’s my high school buddy.” Apparently, the driver was in the dark about a key part of his friend’s identity. The officer noted that the driver “did not realize that the guy sitting next to him was a girl.”

The officer asked the driver to step out of the car. The driver complied, leaving behind the item he’d previously tried to conceal. “I immediately went and retrieved the small plastic bag of cocaine, approximately one hit,” the officer wrote. The driver went to jail. The “guy” in the passenger seat did not.

HOW TO GET BANNED FROM PIEDMONT PARK: A middle-aged man allegedly called a Piedmont Park group and identified himself as the London Terrorist. He told “the staff over the telephone that there would not be a Pride weekend or a Midtown Music Festival.” Apparently, the suspect is a “regular in the park” — a police officer even recognized him when he found him sitting behind the Piedmont Park Visitors Center. He is now officially banned for good.

Items in the Blotter are taken from actual Atlanta police reports. The Blotter Diva compiles them and puts them into her own words.