Shots fired in anger, but the only charge resulting is for damage to the tire flattened by a bullet. That's the outcome of a recent call worked by sheriffs deputies in the Boomer area. They were called to the 97-00 block of Highway 18 south Saturday night for the shots being fired. They found a 26-year old Wilkes man in his vehicle at Highway 18 and Fall View Road. He was badly shaken up, but unhurt. He first told deputies he had been outside the vehicle, running form another man, when the other man shot at the vehicle. Later, as he calmed down, he changed his story, saying he believed he was already in the pickup when the shots were fired. Where he was makes a difference in the possible charges that can be filed in the case.



The man went on to tell deputies he had visited the shooter's house nearby, to check up on him because he knew the man was using drugs. He went inside the house, and the man was unresponsive, a crack pipe laying on his chest. The man's mother went into the house and got him awake -- then he ran outside, threatening the vicitm and demanding to know what he had done with the man's gun. The victim had no idea where the gun was. The man went back into the house, came out with the gun, and told the man he had five seconds to get off the property before he'd be shot. The man did fire several shots -- one into the ground at the victim's feet, one into a tire, which went flat, and one hit the pickup.



When deputies calmed him down, the man refused to press charges for assault, damage to property, or communicating threats.

Wilkes County Sheriff Deputies are working the scene of what appears to have been a drug deal gone sour. From what we've been able to learn so far, one man was stabbed by another along Germantown Road about 9:25 last night. The stabbing victim, a Hispanic male, was airlifted to Charlotte for treatment of his injuries, reported to be wounds to the head. Deputies have been at the scene much of the night, and are looking for a 6-foot tall black male wearing a bandanna seen leaving the area on foot a short time after the stabbing. We expect to have more information on this developing story later today.

It started innocently enough. A Wilkesboro woman tells sheriff deputies a man came by to return a lug wrench he'd borrowed from her. He asked for the keys so he could tuck the wrench away in the cab of the pickup. She gave them to him, and that's the last she's seen of her pickup. Right now, deputies stop short of calling it a stolen vehicle, filing the report as "unauthorized use of a vehicle" instead. They are looking for the 22-year old man, and a white 2003 Ford Ranger pickup, license number VTB-5354. Deanna Santos, the victim, tells deputies she has some ideas where he may be, and will file charges against him herself when she locates him.

A Roaring River man has implicated someone in the theft of a couple of items from two vehicles on his property -- and the name is one sheriff deputies have heard before. A crime report does not list the name of the suspect, because he hasn't been arrested yet, but it does state the person has been mentioned in connection with other similar crimes in the area. In the most recent car break-in, Daryl Blackburn says a cell phone was stolen from the cab of one of his pickups and a chain saw was stolen from the bed of the other. Total loss is just less than 400-dollars. Interestingly, a number of other valuable items were left in the cab of the truck where the cell phone was stolen, untouched by the burglar.

Wilkes county's Hazardous Devices Unit was called out earlier this week, to help deputies in Alexander county. A report released yesterday says the local team received a call from Alexander County Fire Marshal Russell Greene Sunday afternoon concerning several sticks of decaying dynamite that had been found. When the bomb unit arrived on Vastha Road in Alexander county, they confirmed there were a couple of dozen sticks of dynamite in various states of decomposition, located in an outbuilding on the property. Technicians sprayed a neutralizing chemical onto the dynamite before moving it, and a blast-suited tech removed the sticks one-by-one to the bomb trailer. In the course of the cleanup, technicians had to stop several times and spray more neutralizing chemical to stabilize other sticks of dynamite that were found. In all, they recovered 44 sticks, and removed them safely to the Wilkes Fire Training grounds, where they were scheduled to be detonated yesterday as part of a scheduled training exercise.

She's trusted him for years, but a mother's trust may be hard to regain after her son stole 6-thousand dollars. The boomer woman tells sheriff deputies her son had been doing some remodeling work for her -- fixing up the bathroom. Friday morning, an envelope with 6-thousand ollars in 100-dollar bills had disappeared. The son and girlfriend have skipped town in her car, and were last known to be headed for Virginia or Florida.

Several thousand dollars of property stolen, then located -- it turned out family members were responsible. Samuel Davis reported the theft, from his basement, early Friday morning. He hadn't realized the basement had been broken into until his sister told him she'd seen her ex-husband, Dennis Henry Huffman, wearing a watch and cap she knew to be her brother's. When Davis checked his basement, he found a variety of items stolen, including two DVD players, two shotguns, a muzzle loader, a play station, jewelry, and three blankets. Total value was over 3-thousand dollars, plus about 350 dollars damage to the back door, which had been kicked in.



When deputies went to Huttman's house, they found the stuff. They arrested Huffman and his girlfriend, Ashley Lovette. Each faces charges of breaking and entering, theft, and possession of stolen property.

Wilkes county sheriff deputies have been working for a couple of months to locate a laptop computer stolen out of a local high school. The laptop disappeared just before Christmas break, on December 19th. It wasn't reported until the break was over in early January, and the report was released last week. A teacher at North Wilkes High School reported she had left her laptop in a classroom that another teacher was borrowing during finals week. She came back to find the computer gone. Deputies pulled a list of all the students who were through the classroom, interviewed several, and have turned up nothing. The computer has been entered into the national crime database, and deputies are watching local pawn tickets to see if it turns up.

The three people arrested after a police chase in Wilkes Thursday allegedly started their crime spree a day earlier by stealing a gun and a tool that would hep them stay a step ahead of the law -- a police scanner. Eddie Settle, Melissa Huffman, and Ronald Anglin face a number of charges in the several related cases. The break-in that netted the three the gun and scanner happened sometime Wednesday and wasn't reported until after the chase Thursday. When Kenneth Minton called to report the theft, a deputy immediately keyed on the 30-06 rifle that had been stolen as possibly being the one recovered at the end of the chase. Settle, Huffman, and Anglin admitted they'd broken in and stolen the rifle and the scanner Wednesday, as they were planning and preparing for their robbery spree Thursday.