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Judge drops breaking and entering charge, releases Warren artist Aaron Chine from jail
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Judge Terry Ivanchak of Warren Municipal Court on Tuesday dismissed the breaking-and-entering charge filed against Aaron Chine, the well-known Warren tattooist, artist and promoter of David Grohl Alley.
Chine, 35, was arraigned on the charge in Warren Municipal Court on Friday, and Judge Terry Ivanchak ordered him held in the Trumbull County Jail without eligibility to make bond.
But Detective Wayne Mackey of the Warren Police Department said Chine had been claiming that he was in the downtown Warren area at the time of the break-in, and there was surveillance video to prove it.
Mackey said he viewed a surveillance video that showed the area just outside and inside of a downtown building, and the videos showed that Chine was there and not at the scene of the break-in.
“Aaron claimed he was downtown and said there was video, so I checked it out,” Mackey said.
Mackey said after seeing the evidence, he made arrangements through Warren Prosecutor Nick Graham to have the charge dismissed and for Chine to be released.
Chine, who lives above his tattoo shop on West Market Street on Courthouse Square, walked across Courthouse Square from the jail with family members and friends about 1:45 p.m.
He read a statement, saying he was thankful “this awful ordeal is over” and thanked his attorney, Samuel Amendolara, Mackey, Graham and his family “for their efforts in this case.”
“In seeing the evidence proving I could not have broken into the house, the evidence clearly proves I was at my shop tattooing a client at the time,” he said.
“Only through these efforts did the judicial system work and an innocent person was not convicted of such serious crimes,” he said.
The charge stemmed from an April 12 incident at a vacant house on Willard Avenue Northeast in which a neighbor called city police about hearing noises inside.
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 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 into the house and found no one, 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 recognized the white male running from the home to be Aaron Chine.” She knows Chine, and he looked right at her, she said.