Warren detective declares Grohl Alley artist wrongly accused in lookalike case

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

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.

Their similarities were “uncanny,” Kistler said.

It took until Wednesday for Jordan’s criminal cases to be resolved. He pleaded guilty in common pleas court to the Willard break-in, the Woodbine burglary and the Bristol aggravated robbery.

His attorney, Samuel Bluedorn, said Jordan was a good student and a soccer player in high school who hadn’t been in trouble until recently, when he became a heroin addict.

With Jordan’s cases over, Mackey provided additional information about the evidence in the Willard case.

“No hesitation, Aaron Chine did not do that [breaking and entering],” Mackey said. “The correct person is in prison.”

First, Jordan’s girlfriend told police Jordan committed the break-in, and she drove him to and from the crime.

Her descriptions were accurate as to the location where she took Jordan so he could commit the break-in, where her vehicle went afterward, and where Jordan ran after the break-in.

The girlfriend took police to the house where she had taken Jordan, and it was the house on Willard where the break-in occurred, Mackey said. She said she backed into the driveway, dropped Jordan off and left. She picked him up on Woodland Street, which also is what a witness told police, Mackey said.

Her Jeep matches the description the witness gave of the vehicle involved.

When asked if he feels bad that an innocent man was arrested and spent several days in jail, Mackey said, “The best thing we could do for [Chine] was what we did, which was find out who really did it and get them locked up.”

“You hate to see anybody who is innocent spend even a couple hours in jail, but he was [identified] by an eyewitness, and unfortunately that is how the system works,” Mackey said. “It might not have worked initially for him, but it worked eventually.”

Chine agrees that it’s “great” that police found the real criminal, “but I don’t necessarily agree it’s the best thing they could have done. The best thing they could have done was get the right guy in the first place and not put an innocent guy in jail for [six] days.”

Other police officials have said Chine’s refusal to talk with police was a factor because he wouldn’t have been charged if he’d told them there were videos showing him at his business.

Chine, 36, thinks the distinctive look of his dreadlocks is one reason the witness identified him.

Shortly after getting out of jail, he cut off all the dreadlocks but one.

He’s also changed his involvement in various community projects since he was falsely accused.

“I’m afraid of doing anything anymore,” he said. “I’m afraid of being in the public eye. I’m afraid of going out with my wife. When you get arrested for something you didn’t do, it’s scary. It makes you look at everything differently.”