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Warren artist cut off dread-locks after false accusation of break-in
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Artist Aaron Chine says it’s disappointing that despite his downtown tattoo business, promotion of the city and charity work, police arrested him in April based on one flawed identification.
“I’m a 36-year-old married man with a successful business who’s never been in trouble for drugs or anything like that,” he said.
Yet, after a woman told a police officer that she saw Chine emerge from a vacant house on Willard Avenue Northeast on April 8 where a break-in had just occurred, police tried to question him, then arrested him in connection with the break-in a few days later after he declined to be interviewed.
Chine was released from the county jail six days later, after Warren police viewed surveillance video from the tattoo shop that indicated Chine couldn’t have committed the break-in because he was at the business. The charge was dismissed.
Three weeks ago, Warren police filed a charge of breaking and entering against Andrew T. Jordan, 24, of Brier Street Southeast, charging him with the Willard break-in.
Jordan has not yet appeared in Warren Municipal Court to be arraigned because he’s in a drug-rehabilitation center, said Sgt. Joe Kistler with the Warren Police Department’s detective bureau.
When contacted by The Vindicator Wednesday, Chine said it’s surprising that police haven’t put Jordan in jail by now.
“They arrested me from work,” he said. “The only evidence they had was this lady.”
Since the episode, he has done research that has shown him how often eyewitness accounts can be flawed, Chine said.
“It happens more than you can realize,” he said. “You have to use some common sense in arresting someone.”
He spent his birthday in jail. And being accused of a serious crime has left him and his wife “terrified” that it could happen again.
Within an hour of leaving jail, Chine cut off his dreadlocks except for one in the back, concerned that the hair could have been a factor in his being falsely accused.
Chine said detectives saw him downtown a few days before he was arrested and asked him to come to the police station to discuss a couple of matters that might involve him.
Chine saw a friend, Atty. Jeff Goodman, a short time later, and Goodman advised Chine not to talk to police, so he called Detective Wayne Mackey and told him that, Chine said.
The woman on Willard Avenue called police about 3 p.m. April 8 when she heard noises coming from a vacant house next door. While waiting for police, she also called a neighbor who is a sheriff’s detective. The woman, who also was the real-estate agent selling the house, unlocked the door for the detective.
The detective called out, but the door was slammed in the detective’s face. When the detective went to the back of the house, the neighbor watched the front and later said she saw Chine, whom she knew, running from the front. He looked right at her, she said. He got in a white sport-utility vehicle and left.
When officers entered the house later, they found copper pipes cut and piled up inside.
Jordan also has dreadlocks and is similar in height and appearance to Chine. Kistler called the similarities in their appearance “uncanny.”
In addition to the Willard break-in, Jordan is charged with burglary and receiving stolen property in connection with a March 21 incident at a house on Woodbine Avenue Southeast in which a computer and television were stolen.
Jordan initially was charged with receiving stolen property after police located an item stolen from the home in a pawn shop and traced the sale to Jordan, Kistler said.
But police recovered blood from the home near a broken window and had it tested by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. It came back as a match to Jordan.
Kistler said there is no blood evidence connecting Jordan to the Willard break-in, but Jordan was charged with it because of his similar appearance to Chine and because of evidence of Jordan’s other crimes.
Chine said his wife has a white SUV. Kistler said he doesn’t know if Jordan has one.
Meanwhile, Jordan also was charged last month in Newton Falls Municipal Court with the Aug. 7, 2015, aggravated robbery of Edna’s Market on state Route 45 in Bristolville. Deputy sheriffs said a man wearing a bandanna robbed the store of cash and an employee’s cellphone while holding a gun. Deputies recovered the phone and $95 in cash in the store parking lot. Jordan also has not had a court appearance in that case.
If convicted in that case, he could get 10 years in prison. The Woodbine burglary charge could produce a prison sentence of eight years. The Willard breaking-and-entering charge could produce a prison sentence of one year.