This story got my attention, as many news stories shared via social media are designed to do. The headline was intriguing. Some would call it click-bait, but if it works, it works.
“Police say a man and his friends ran up a $100 tab, but he left his phone behind and got arrested for murder.” Ok, I read that tweet and I was intrigued. The headline on the accompanying story from Atlanta’s WSB TV indicated that the man had “dined and dashed” at a local seafood restaurant and ended up facing murder charges.
To quote Will Farrell’s character Ron Burgundy from the movie Anchorman, “that escalated quickly.” Given that another attempt to dine and dash from an Atlanta area restaurant recently ended in the shooting of a security guard over a Valentine’s weekend dinner, I was curious if this was the same case, a trend, or if the former charges had escalated to murder.
It turns out this was a separate incident. A group walked out on a check at the Juicy Crab in South Cobb County, but one in the group left his cell phone behind at the table. Per the article, someone from the restaurant was aware enough to see the group leaving, and was able to get the tag number of the car in which they left. Police were called.
The responding police officer found the phone, which had an unlock screen that displayed the phone’s owner as a pre-set selfie picture. Running the tag number, a name was generated that matched a driver’s license photo with the one on the phone. That name was run through the Georgia Crime Information Center’s computer database, and it reported back that the suspect had an outstanding arrest warrant for murder.
A few hours later, the suspect’s car was identified by license plate readers in nearby Brookhaven. Brian Fort was arrested and sent to the DeKalb County jail, with charges pending for murder, theft by receiving stolen property, and possession by a firearm by a convicted felon.
So how does this move…
Read the full article here