AMBER ALERT
The N.C. Center for Missing Persons is issuing a statewide AMBER Alert for Mariah Poland, a two year old girl from Nash County. Mariah was abducted in a stolen vehicle.

Mariah was left unattended in a vehicle by Amy Calvin as she made a purchase at a convenient store in Rocky Mount. An unknown black male left with the stolen vehicle. He has been described as 6' tall and 200 pounds wearing black clothing. He may be operating a stolen green Honda Accord with North Carolina registration VRD-3824.

Mariah is 2 years old and weighs 30 pounds and is 36 inches tall. She has brown hair and brown eyes and was wearing a red infant sleeper with white snowflakes.

Purse Stolen from Car Trunk
A Wilkes woman may not only have lost a valuable bracelet, but she may be set up for a future identity theft. The woman tells sheriff deputies she was picking up her grandchild at a local church school last week, and put her purse in the car’s trunk when she went inside. After picking up the child, the woman stopped at a local store, and that’s when she realized the puse was not in the trunk anymore. There several people in the school parking lot at the same time she was there, and the woman says any one of them could have opened the unlocked car and popped the truck to make off with the purse. Besides the bracelet, the woman lost several ID’s and bank cards, along with her cell phone.

Light Up Downtown is Friday
Friday night is the annual Light Up Downtown celebration in North Wilkesboro. Organizers say this year will feature three stages throughout downtown providing a variety of entertainment. Nearly 20 performers and groups are slated to appear. Of course Santa will be there, in the lobby of Wilkes Towers from 5:30 to 9pm, and there will be hayrides to take you anywhere you want in downtown. Food and craft vendors will line 10th street during the event. The Christmas lights are set to be turned on at 6:15pm.

Domestic Violence with A Twist
Sheriff deputies say a recent domestic violence incident has a strange twist. Donald Roberts tells deputies his son was beating on his front door about 1 a-m last Tuesday, and woke up his family. He wanted to take his 15-year old sister with him, because she knows where the son’s wife is now living. When his father said no, the yougner Roberts became belligerent, and started to beat on him. Dad fought him off, and the son hasn’t been seen since. Roberts did not report the crime to deputies until more than two days

Stolen 4-Wheeler
Wilkes County Sheriff Deputies are looking for a four-wheeler that was stolen this weekend. Boyd Simmons called early Friday morning to say the four-wheeler was missing. He said he regularly lets a neighbor borrow the 1999 Honda four-wheeler, and had let him borrow it Thursday night. The neighbor had parked the four-wheeler in his own yard for the night, and woke up Friday morning to find it gone. He had taken the keys to the four-wheeler inside with him. It’s worth about 56-hundred dollars. So far, there are no suspects.

Brotherly Fight Ends with One in Jail
A Wilkes teenager was hurt during a fight with his brother, who ended up being arrested. Sheriff Deputies were called to a home on Crysle Cemetary Road in the wee hours of Saturday morning. 17-year old Logan Cardwell told deputies his brother Jordan had hit him multiple times during a fight. Jordan, who is 16, refused to follow a deputy’s instructions to go back in the house and cool down, insisting instead that the deputies take him to jail. He was booked on a simple assault charge.

McGrady Vacation Home Burglarized
The owner of a vacation home in McGrady had to clean up a mess and call the sheriff’s office when he arrived in Wikes last weekend. That’s because someone had broken into the house. The man, who lives in Brevard, says he’d locked the house when he left it the middle of last month. But when he got there Saturday afternoon, the front door was unlocked and a window was broken. Inside, the thief had not stolen much – a set of deer antlers and a DVD player were all the owner could find missing. He told deputies a local plumber had been scheduled to do some work at the house, but they have not been able to get in touch with the plumber to find out whether he may have noticed the damage.

Identity Theft
A local public servant is the latest victim of identity theft in the area. The EMS worker, who lives in Ronda, told deputies Friday that someone had taken nearly 40 dollars out of his bank account without his knowledge. The man says he doesn’t know how someone would have gotten his account number or other bank information.

Break-In Reported
A Wilkes woman says more than 300-dollars worth of property was stolen from her house this weekend. Karen Kirby reported the theft yesterday afternoon. She says she arrived at her Miller’s Creek home to find the front door pushed open. When she got inside, she found several medicines had been stolen, along with a cell phone, a pair of Nikes, and some clothes. Neighbors said they did see a white picup in the area earlier in the day, but no one was able to remember a tag number or a description of whoever was inside.

Police Bust 40+ Drug Dealers
Wilkes authorities have spent the past week rounding up drug dealers, in what they say is the biggest such sweep in two decades. The arrests started after indictments were handed down by a grand jury last week. The indictments alleged more than 150 felony drug crimes, committed by more than 40 people.

It’s the result of more than a year of work by police in Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro, along with the Sheriff’s Department and State Bureau of Investigation.

Police said that the roundup included upper-level to midlevel drug dealers, involving such street drugs as methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine, both in powder and crack form.
Police also arrested dealers of such opiate-based prescription painkillers as Darvocet, Percocet and Oxycontin. Authorities said that the dealers got the drugs through "doctor shopping," a practice that involves getting multiple prescriptions by visiting various doctors across the region. Authorities said that no health-care professionals were involved in illegal activity charged in these indictments.

Vending Macines Broken Into
Two vending machines were broken into in Wilkesboro the middle of last week, and police have arrested a man for one of the break-ins.

The first break-in was reported late Wednesday night at DJ’s Car Wash. According to the police report, a customer of the car wash called 9-1-1 to report the machine had been broken into. When the officer called the owner, he was told the machine had been broken into the week before last – but no police report had been made on that break-in. So far, police have no suspects in the break-in.

About mid-day Thursday, police were called to Key City Furniture, where an employee walked into the break room just in time to see another employee breaking into a vending machine. As he investigated, the officer found that other employees at Key had seen 38-year old Eric Dale Church in the break room with the lights turned out on several occasions. This time, the plant manager said, Church had gotten the machine open and taken an unknown amount of money. He was fired on the spot and banned from the property, according to the police report.

Operation Slow Down
Highway patrol troopers statewide are starting a special emphasis on speeding and other driving hazards today, which will run through the day after Thanksgiving. Operation Slow Down occurs at this time each year, and involves troopers statewide making an extra effort to get drivers to slow down, use seat belts, and safely restrain children. The Highway Patrol says speed is the number one killer on North Carolina highways.

Drugs Stolen During Break-In
A Wilkes woman says her ex-boyfriend has a drug problem, and that’s why she believes it was him that broke into her mobile home. The 24-year old woman said she’d gone out for a short time Wednesday afternoon, and when she came back home, she found the front door open.

Several bottles of prescription medicine were stolen, along with a number of CDs by artists the man liked. Other, more expensive items were left behind, which leads deputies to believe it was not a random break-in. So far, they have not made any arrests.

More Drug Arrests, Not Part of Sweep
In addition to the sweep of suspected drug dealers across the area last week, Wilkesboro Police have recently arrested two other people for drug trafficking and possession.

Both arrests happened Wednesday. The first is related to a shoplifting case we told you about on 3WC News last week. Nerys Shoemaker had been arrested with over 200-dollars worth of merchandise, after being stopped by a security guard at Kohl’s. When she was booked into jail, two bottles of prescription medicine were found, neither of which was in her name. The detective investigating the drug portion of the crimes said a bottle of hydrocodone that had been prescribed two days before had started with 120 pills, and there were only 40 left when Shoemaker was arrested.

The second arrest happened just before midnight Wednesday at Red Carpet Inn. Wilkesboro police found marijuana, hydrocodone, Xanax and drug scales in a room occupied by Jason Lamar Lea. They had been called to the hotel by someone who suspected drug use was going on in the room; when they arrived, Lea let them in and gave them the drugs, which had been put in a dresser drawer.

N.C. Baptists Expected to Make Historic Change
The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina could expel any church that endorses homosexuality after its annual meeting this week.

On Tuesday, the organization is expected to pass a measure that would alter the articles of its constitution to provide for such exclusions. Some local churches said the move symbolizes a divide that began years ago between conservative and progressive churches.

With 1.2 million members and 4,080 churches, the N.C. convention is the second largest association of Baptist churches in the nation. It had previously kicked out several churches that ordained gays or blessed their relationships, including a Cabarrus County church in 2003, which accepted two gay men as members and later baptized them.

And since last year, members of churches that support a group called the Alliance of Baptists, which endorses gay rights, have not been able to serve as trustees for Baptist organizations.

Harley Dumped, Damaged Druing Break-In
A Wilkes woman believes her ex-boyfriend is to blame for a break-in at her house recently that caused more than a thousand dollars damage. The woman had gone to a club Wednesday night, and got into an argument with the man. Early Thursday morning, her mother woke her up and told her to go check the garage, because she’d looked out and seen a hole in the window. Her mother says she had heard a ruckus outside late in the evening as she was watching TV, but that she’d assumed it was her daughter.

When the daughter opened the garage, she found a Harley turned on its side, there were other scratches on the gas tank, various wires and lines on the bike had been cut, and the tires had been slashed. So far, deputies have not arrested the man.