With a full blue moon weekend, Orange police were busy Thursday through Sunday with a variety of complaints, including a foul crime in which someone kicked holes in the drywall of a house being repaired after Tropical Storm Harvey.
In another incident, a 63-year-old man said he had blacked out when the Ford Mustang he was driving hit two buildings on Green Avenue across the street from West Orange-Stark Middle School. He had minor injuries.
In another incident, an intruder threw a propane tank through a screen door and damaged the door and the crawfish pot.
Arrestees included a man at Crawdad’s store on FM 1442 pointing his finger like a guy at people. When police arrested him for public intoxication, he ducked down in the patrol SUV to avoid the bullets that he claimed were being shot at the vehicle.
Officers had to discharge Taser shock guns twice, including one for a Cuban man who didn’t speak English and had “erratic behavior” at the Waffle House. He was arrested for misdemeanor evading arrest.
In the second evading arrest case, a 31-year-old Orangefield man was arrested for enhanced evading arrest, felony possession of methamphetamine, and misdemeanor possession of synthetic marijuana.
Police reported Joseph Joe Marange was captured after a foot chase when officers stopped his sedan on Park Avenue about 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
Police said his Chevrolet Malibu was stopped because of an expired registration. The patrol officer saw a burned “blunt” of synthetic marijuana in the middle console and another burned one inside the holder of the passenger side door.
The car stopped in the 1500 block of Park Avenue. When the officer asked the man to get out, he pulled away from the officer and ran away. The officer reported he chased after the man into a yard. The man slipped, then ran back toward the officer. The officer said he used his Taser, but it was not effective because the prongs grazed the man. However, the man then slipped again and officers were able to handcuff him.
Police said they found a baggie with methamphetamine and another baggie with synthetic marijuana. In addition, Marange was convicted of evading arrest in 2008, which enhances a misdemeanor evading charge to a state jail felony. Police reported the man was also wanted on warrants for parole violations.
A man called police Thursday afternoon to the 5300 block of Montrose Street in the Pinemont neighborhood because of criminal mischief. Someone had gone into the house and apparently kicked a hole in the drywall in every room. Police reported the holes were about six inches wide and about a foot off the ground.
At 11:16 Friday night, a man walked into an unlocked door at a house in the 200 block of Lakeside Street in the Sunset Park area. The resident told police the man seemed to want to pick a fight with her grown children, who were not at the house. She could not get the man to leave and he picked up a propane tank used on a crawfish cooker through her screen door. He also damaged the crawfish pot and basket.
Police went to Crawdad’s off Interstate 10 at FM 1442 at 7 p.m. Friday because people were complaining a man was making a finger gesture like a gun and pointing at them. Police said he smelled of alcohol. Officers arrested 46-year-old Tracy Douglas Savant Jr. of Beaumont for public intoxication.
Officers reported that when Savant was in the back seat of the patrol vehicle, he starting lying down in the back seat because he heard bullets hitting the vehicle and he didn’t want to get hit by gunfire. He claimed people wanted to shoot him because he knew about a homicide in Houston.
When police took him to the Orange County Jail, he told corrections officers he had used methamphetamine earlier in the day, so corrections officers would not take him without medical clearance. Orange police then took him to the Southeast Texas Medical Center in Port Arthur where he was examined and cleared to be admitted to the jail.
Saturday at 1:30 p.m., a 63-year-old man driving a Ford Mustang eastbound on the outside lane of Green Avenue went off the roadway in the 1400 block and ran through a vacant building. The car then hit the front of a business next door. The man refused medical treatment for reported minor injuries. Police said the man told officers he had blacked out and had done it before. Officers want the Texas Department of Public Safety to review his medical condition for a driver’s license.
A 46-year-old Havana, Cuba, man was arrested at 12:13 a.m. Thursday outside the Waffle House on 27th Street off Interstate 10. Employees at the restaurant called police because of his “erratic behavior.” Police said he didn’t understand English but showed them a Cuban ID card and a passport when asked in Spanish for his license. However, he didn’t follow police directions given for the Spanish words for “park” about the car. Officers said he could have been intoxicated. When he pulled his arm back from being arrested, he was stunned four times with a Taser gun and then taken to the Orange County Jail for misdemeanor resisting arrest.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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