Retail theft has been blamed for closing stores from San Francisco to New York, and while the problem may be hard to measure, one Charlottesville man has racked up at least eight arrests in the past 15 months.
Twenty-nine-year-old Dominique Michael Anderson faces sentencing next week on his guilty plea for breaking into a house near the University of Virginia last summer while allegations of attempting to take money and merchandise from stores were hanging over him.
Last August, an intruder was found inside the 14th Street house that serves as the home of UVa’s Sailing Association. If the suspect had thought that all students went away for the summer, then he was mistaken, as there was at least one person living in the so-called Sailing House, according to a report by officer Michael Darby who chased the fleeing man down nearby Grady Avenue.
"I attempted to tase him twice and was not successful," Darby wrote in a criminal complaint. "We lost sight of him."
Darby revealed that the pursuing officers eventually found Anderson lying in the yard of another house. Before getting arrested at gunpoint, Anderson allegedly dropped the keys to a car belonging to an occupant of the Sailing House.
Four months prior, Anderson was arrested for taking a $3,000 e-bike from the Livery Stable bar in downtown Charlottesville while fleeing an attempted cash register robbery at a shop on the nearby Downtown Mall. While there was no assertion that Anderson wielded a weapon or would flee Central Virginia where he has spent his entire life, he failed to win bail on the bike theft charge.
A local magistrate refused to grant bail due to an array of prior convictions. Those included two counts of domestic battery, an additional count of assault and battery, shoplifting, property damage, driving under the influence, making a false identification to police, carrying a concealed weapon and two counts of brandishing a firearm.
In June 2023, Anderson appeared in Charlottesville Circuit Court to sign a plea agreement on the bicycle incident, then reclassified as "unauthorized use of a vehicle," that gave him a two-month jail sentence and enrolled him in a Richmond residential treatment program called Real Life.
However, 10 nights into his stay there, Anderson allegedly absconded from Real Life. Contacted shortly before midnight by telephone, he apologized for leaving without signing out, said he was drunk and using crack cocaine and expressed hope that the caller would keep his admissions secret, according to a letter penned by a Real Life official.
Instead, according to the letter, Anderson was informed that his stint at Real Life had been terminated and that he should contact the facility during business hours to arrange the return of his personal possessions.
"He stated that he wanted his property now or he was coming in to get it," according to the letter from Real Life’s Steven Tyler. "Anderson began beating and kicking on the doors and windows of the recovery house at which time police were called."
Around the time of that ill-fated stay in Richmond, Anderson was charged with stealing $450 in liquor from the Virginia ABC Store on Charlottesville’s West Main Street.
While that charge was later dropped by prosecutors, Anderson currently stands charged with perpetrating a string of property crimes this year:
■ Feb. 8: breaking into McClenny Funeral Service on Henry Avenue but taking nothing of value.
■ Feb. 24: taking between $150 and $200 in cash from the register at Fitzgerald Tire in Belmont.
■ Feb. 27: stealing an empty cash register and a printer from Mockingbird restaurant in Belmont.
■ April 1: stealing a debit card from a State Farm insurance agent on Barracks Road and taking it downtown to buy alcohol and cigarettes.
In three of this year’s four criminal allegations, surveillance cameras caught images of a man with a distinctive neck tattoo with red ink as well as red and black shoes, attributes that detectives said matched Anderson.
Today, Anderson’s new charges have triggered parole violations from old offenses, and he has been held since April 6.
Earlier this year, Anderson allegedly failed to appear in Charlottesville Circuit Court for his original sentencing for breaking into the sailing club’s house. At the rescheduled hearing set for July 23, Anderson’s presence should be more definite, as he will be transported by sheriff’s deputies from the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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