Johnson City, TN (The Weekly Vice) - Christopher Walls, a 41-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday on allegations he disabled customer's vehicles before offering to fix them.
According to Johnson City police, Walls intentionally damaged vehicles, waited for the vehicle's owner to appear, and then offered to fix those vehicles on the spot - for a price.
Investigators first learned of the alleged scheme after Walls' repair of a North Carolina woman's vehicle seemed suspicious to her.
Police say the woman and her husband exited a restaurant to discover her vehicle would not start. A short time later Walls appeared in a pickup truck with an amber light, claiming to be a mobile mechanic who could fix her car.
After looking at the couple's car, Walls diagnosed the problem as a defective starter and quoted them a price to fix it. When the couple told him they didn't have enough for the repair, Walls claimed that he could probably repair the starter by cleaning the starter brushes. Walls then charged the couple $109.
The woman called police and reported Walls' activity as suspicious.
Police caught up with Walls as he was finishing up a purported "repair" of a Virginia man's vehicle as it sat in a Red Lobster parking lot. Walls had appeared on the scene about 45 minutes after the man discovered his vehicle wouldn't start.
When the man didn't have enough money for the repair, he was forced to go to an ATM machine and withdraw money to cover the cost.
Investigators say Walls had $341 in cash with him that he could not account for, had pieces of cut wire and an invoice book that logged numerous "repairs" that he had done.
Walls was booked into jail on two counts of theft and driving on a revoked license. He remains jailed in lieu of $10,000 bond.
Danny Vice
The Weekly Vice
http://www.theweeklyvice.com
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4 comments:
Damn, that's a pretty shady thing to do....
Who knows how many other people he did this to.....
It sounds like he was crawling under cars and cutting the starter cable. WE read about a lot of stupid crooks here but this guy was pretty clever, albeit wrong... still clever and non-violent.
Amber light and all… he isn’t your typical lazy, dumbass criminal… he actually worked and thought things out a little anyway. I am sure prison will hone his skills and make him a much larger boil on the ass of society.
I was thinking the same thing.
Pretty crafty of him. He could simply slide under the car and thread the wires back together within a minute or so - then devote the rest of his time to playing repair guy...
And his story is very plausible.
A lot of car parts that seem bad, simply need cleaning at the contact points - or there's a wire that just needs re-soldering.
I'm really surprised he got caught.
I'm even more surprised police officer took this on as a case. Good for them.
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