A local 16-year-old’s plan to loot cars for money in the Port Royal area was thwarted not by local police but by his mother.
The 36-year-old mother of the Shell Point neighborhood searched her son’s room last week to find a number of strange items, including a keychain with unknown keys, an abundance of firearms paraphernalia, a small tool for breaking windows, a marijuana grinder and three South Carolina driver’s licenses that did not belong to him. On Thursday morning, she called Beaufort County deputies, who also notified the Port Royal Police Department.
Port Royal officers determined that most of the items found had previously been reported stolen in car break-ins in the city, according to an incident report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. The keys, licenses and window breakers were turned over to Port Royal police, while other evidence that could not be linked to existing thefts was placed in the county evidence locker, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.
Police returned one of the stolen licenses to the owner in Beaufort, who told officers he thought he lost the license at the Walmart on Robert Smalls Parkway. Her missing debit cards were not found in the teenager’s bedroom, suggesting that the valuable items in the stolen wallets were stored elsewhere.
Capt. John Griffith, a Port Royal police spokesman, did not specify how many cases the stolen items were linked to because some thefts “are still being actively investigated.” The department petitioned the teen to family court, which is South Carolina’s process for charging minors with crimes.
The same teen was reported missing by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office as the situation unfolded. The day before his mother contacted police about the stolen items, he allegedly “left his home in Shell Point and never returned.” He returned home Monday afternoon, his mother said.
