Grohl Alley tattooist vindicated, but after being wrongly jailed

WARREN

For people who watched Aaron Chine as he helped develop David Grohl Alley into an attraction and a source of pride, his arrest April 8 for a break-in was a shock.

The downtown tattooist and artist was charged in a Willard Avenue Northeast break-in after an eyewitness said she saw Chine, whom she knew, coming out of a neighbor’s vacant house.

Police later found copper pipes piled up in the home.

The witness said she was “in shock” the man she saw was Chine.

Detective Wayne Mackey of the Warren Police Department asked Chine to come to the police station to talk about the crime, but Chine declined the interview on the advice of an attorney friend.

Chine, who had been convicted of a misdemeanor menacing offense two weeks earlier for an incident at a downtown bar, was charged with the break-in.

At his arraignment, a municipal court judge ordered Chine be placed in the Trumbull County Jail because the new charge triggered a probation violation related to the menacing conviction.

After Chine was jailed, Mackey investigated Chine’s claims that surveillance video from his downtown tattoo shop would prove he was at work at the time of the break-in.

Mackey reviewed the footage and asked Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak to drop the charge, and the judge did.

By then, Chine had spent parts of six days behind bars.

Two months later, police charged Andrew T. Jordan, 24, of Brier Street Southeast, with the Willard Avenue break-in, plus a recent burglary on Woodbine Avenue and an armed robbery at a store in Bristolville.

Police had DNA evidence linking Jordan to the burglary and armed robbery, but not the Willard break-in.

The police department’s Sgt. Joe Kistler would not discuss all the evidence police had at the time, but one fact was clear: Chine and Jordan were near look-alikes.

Read more about the case in Saturday's Vindickator or on Vindy.com.