Excerpts from the Marblehead police log of Friday, March 24 through Monday, March 27, 2023. Consistent with state law, Marblehead Police have adopted a policy of not providing to media outlets reports related to incidents related to domestic violence, juveniles and matters that remain under investigation.
Friday, March 24
5:43 a.m. An officer investigated a neighbor complaint on Creesy Street.
9:12 a.m. A Pleasant Street resident reported having received annoying phone calls.
10:20 a.m. An abandoned bike was reported on Rowland Street.
12:05 p.m. An officer assisted a Summit Road resident.
1:52 p.m. An officer spoke in the station who had already spoken with another officer about ongoing harassment by another man, who had just texted him, prompting him to plan to spend the night away from home. The officer advised him to block the number and explained the process to obtain a harassment prevention order. Hours later, the officer went to the man’s apartment to get a picture of the texts, but he had already deleted them.
3:38 p.m. An officer spoke at the station with a contractor who reported months’ worth of harassment while doing a job on Ocean Avenue from a man who had begun taking photos and, more recently, video of their work. The man had also retained the services of a lawyer, who had been emailing the town requesting the permits of the project. The contractor requested that the officer speak with the man regarding the situation, and the officer advised him that it would be better to contact the police while the situation was happening. The officer further advised the contractor how to obtain a harassment prevention order.
6 p.m. Officers assisted with disabled vehicle on Ocean Avenue and Pleasant Street.
9:23 p.m. Officers restored the peace after suspicious activity was reported on Sewall and Elm streets.
Saturday, March 25
12:14 p.m. Officers assisted the Fire Department with investigating a third-floor smoke alarm on Pleasant Street.
3:57 p.m. An officer patrolling the downtown heard fire alarms sounding at Terry’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream on Atlantic Avenue. Upon entering Terry’s, the officer immediately detected the “overwhelming odor” of marijuana inside of the shop, according to his report. An employee then approached the officer and reported that a customer had informed her that three girls had exited the female restroom, where they had been smoking marijuana, triggering the smoke detectors and causing them to flee. The employee knew two of the girls from school but did not know the third. Firefighters reset the fire alarms. The officer spoke with the owner of the building, who had come to the scene after receiving several phone calls from tenants about the fire alarms sounding. He was informed of his right to issue no-trespass orders for the three girls. The officer then spoke with the owner of Terry’s, who led him to his back office to review the security footage, which had documented the girls entering the restroom and then one of them exiting followed by the two others approximately four minutes later. The officer explained to the owner his right to issue no-trespass orders against the girls, which he said he would consider. He also said that he would like the girls to come down to Terry’s with their parents to apologize. Later in the evening, the officer went to one of the girls’ homes and was met at the door by one of the girls. As she began to deny that anything had occurred, the officer cut her off and told her to stop talking, noting that he could not legally question her without her parents present. The officer eventually spoke to the parents of the two girls whose identity was known and learned the first name of the third. The parents were informed about the situation, including the owner of Terry’s request for an apology. The officer planned to share his report with the school resource officer to get his help identifying the third girl.
Sunday, March 26
1:17 a.m. While patrolling in the area of Atlantic Avenue and Bubier Road, an officer came across what appeared to be parts of a vehicle on the side of the roadway and on the sidewalk in front of a telephone pole. Upon pulling over to investigate further, he noticed that the support cable attached to the telephone pole had been broken off from where it was attached to the ground, and the neon yellow plastic that is usually wrapped around the cable had been broken off and thrown roughly 15 feet in front of the pole. Based on the car parts at the scene and the snapped support cable, the officer notified dispatch that a vehicle had driven into and broken the support cable and fled the area. Upon inspection of the car parts left at the scene, the officer was able to determine that the suspect vehicle was a gray BMW. Other officers joined the search for the vehicle, while a dispatcher notified the Marblehead Municipal Light Department that the pole needed to be inspected. While photographing the crash scene, the officer discovered two vehicle parts, a fog lamp and a bumper cover, that had BMW logos and serial numbers on them. He cleared the scene and returned to the police station with the two pieces of evidence. He then ran both serial numbers through a BMW parts database and concluded that the suspect vehicle was manufactured between 1997 and 2000, and was either a 540i or 528i. The officer then had the dispatcher run this information through the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services database to find a potential match, which returned a list of potential matches. The first suspect vehicle that the officer checked was a gray 1998 BMW 528i located on Union Street. Upon inspecting the front end of the vehicle, the officer immediately noticed fresh front-end damage to the left, center and right of the vehicle. It was also missing a fog lamp and had a puncture similar to the shape of the base of the support cable. The officer determined that this was the suspect vehicle and alerted dispatch that he would be attempting to make contact with the owner. The officer then knocked on the door of the home and was met by a man who confirmed that he had been driving earlier in the evening and, after thinking about it for a second, that he had struck something, which he believed had been rocks in the road, as he was returning to town after having showing the driver who had picked him up at the airport how to get out of town. According to the officer’s report, the man “brushed the damage off as being no big deal and did not seem to comprehend that he had struck more than just a rock in the roadway.” The officer wrote, “Throughout our conversation, [the man] never seemed to grasp the severity of what happened and came up with multiple different excuses [as] to why he may have struck something.”
5:26 p.m. An officer spoke to a man about someone trying to make a claim for unemployment using the man’s Social Security number. The man said he had already reported it to the unemployment office and his employer. The officer advised him to alert the credit bureaus, and the credit card companies and banks with which he had accounts.
5:49 p.m. An officer investigated a report that the traffic lights were on flash on Atlantic and Ocean avenues.
Monday, March 27
8:06 a.m. An officer investigated a report that trucks had been idling for more than 15 minutes on Stonybrook Road.
10:02 a.m. A caller reported that cars had been egged on Schooner Ridge.
10:16 a.m. Services were rendered after a disturbance on Devereux and Beach streets.
10:24 a.m. A necklace was found on Smith and Pleasant streets.
3:24 p.m. Officer investigated a disturbance on Creesy Street and filed a report.
4:25 p.m. A kitchen knife was found on Atlantic Avenue.
5:41 p.m. Officers investigated a report of larceny, forgery or fraud on Amherst Road.
