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Well-known downtown Warren figure Aaron Chine jailed on breaking-and-entering charge
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Aaron Chine, well-known downtown tattooist, artist and promoter of David Grohl Alley, is in the Trumbull County Jail, facing charges of breaking and entering.
Chine was arraigned on the felony charge Friday in Warren Municipal Court, ordered held in the jail without eligibility to make bond and ordered to undergo a drug test. A not-guilty plea was entered for him.
The charge stems from a Tuesday-afternoon incident at a vacant house on Willard Avenue Northeast in which a neighbor called city police about hearing noises coming from the vacant house.
After waiting 15 minutes for police, the woman, who is also the real-estate agent listing the home for sale, contacted a neighbor who is a law-enforcement officer and told her about it.
The agent said she heard banging in the house, and no one should be in the dwelling.
The law-enforcement officer saw a broken window, had the real-estate saleswoman unlock the door and called out to the inside of the home. But the door was slammed shut in the officer’s face.
The officer called for backup. When other officers arrived, they went in the house and found no one still there, but copper pipes had been cut and stacked, and a pair of pipe cutters were there.
When the officers asked the real-estate agent if she had seen anyone, she said she saw a white male running from the front.
She said she didn’t tell any of the officers at the time because she was “in shock at that time because she recognize the white male running from the home to be Aaron Chine.” She knows Chine, and he looked right at her, she said.
Chine, 35, who lives above his tattoo shop on West Market Street on Courthouse Square, was arrested on the charge Thursday afternoon in David Grohl Alley, which is behind his shop and home, booked at the jail and released on bond.
At his arraignment Friday before Judge Terry Ivanchak, Chine pleaded not guilty to a probation violation triggered by the breaking-and-entering arrest.
Judge Ivanchak placed Chine on probation March 31 after Chine pleaded no contest and was found guilty of disorderly conduct, a reduction from an aggravated-menacing charge filed against him Jan. 15 for an incident at a city bar Jan. 13.
In that incident, Chine was accused of shouting at another patron and then threatening to kill him.
Chine’s wife, Amanda Chine, 27, also was charged with assault involving another female related to the Jan. 13 incident. That charge still is pending.
Aaron Chine, his Chinebox Inc. tattoo businesses in Austintown and then in Warren, his art shows and his efforts to promote David Grohl Alley have been chronicled numerous times in local news media over the past several years.