A Wilkes man has been charged with misdemeanor child abuse after police determined he was intoxicated and driving around with the infant in the car seat. It happened Friday evening, and started at the Fast Track on Highway 421. Employees there called in the possible intoxicated driver, and an officer arrived just in time to see the person leave, nearly hitting the curb as he made an erratic right-hand turn out of the driveway. The officer followed the car to Old Browns Ford Road, where he pulled the driver over after watching him have trouble maintaining his lane of travel at about 30 miles an hour. 35-year old David Wade Shumate was slurring his speech and repeating himself, and when asked to get out of the car, he failed several points of a sobriety test. Another officer found prescription drugs in the car, which the passenger said were for her back pain. The 21-month old child was sitting contentedly in the child seat. Shumate did not have a valid license, and neither did the woman, who is the little boy’s mother. So an officer waited for a responsible adult to come and drive mom and baby home while the other officer took Shumate to jail, to face a child abuse charge along with driving while intoxicated and driving on a revoked license charges.

Twice this weekend, a reported shoplifting incident led to people being arrested on other, unrelated charges. The first case happened Friday at JC Penneys. A man was stopped outside the story shortly after police were called to the shoplifting report, and he was found to have a number of the items that had been reported missing, both in the pickup he was driving and on his person. His story was that he’d borrowed the truck from a family member in Lenoir to come to Tyson and try to find work. Of course,t he two businesses aren’t close together, so that raised some suspicions. Well, he said, he had been at Penneys because there were some sheets on sale, and just before he was going to purchase them he decided to put them back and not buy them. The items in his truck had supposedly been bought by his relative — something that was not borne out by the register records at the store, which showed the items had not been paid for. In the process of the investigation, it was learned that 36-year old Boushana Fontanta was driving without a drivers license, because it has been revoked. He ended up being taken to jail for that and the shoplifting. All of the nearly 260-dollars worth of clothing was returned to the store.

The second incident happened Sunday morning at Lowes Foods. One of the Lowes employees had detained Robbie Roberts as he tried to leave the area behind Subway, and the Subway manager told police he’d seen Roberts try to stuff some steaks into a plastic shopping bag after he’d some out of the grocery store and hidden behind Subway. Lowes employees indicated he had left the store without paying for the ribeye steaks, worth 64-dollars. During a pat-down, police discovered drug paraphernalia on Roberts and that he had an outstanding warrant for missing a court appearance. So he was hauled off to jail on those charges, along with the count of misdemeanor theft.

Good news for a Wilkes woman whose purse was stolen from her car while she was picking up her children from school. Sheriffs deputies report Sandy Roten was called by a person who found her purse over the weekend. The purse was stolen Friday afternoon at Mulberry Elementary School, and was found by the man Friday evening along Baptist Home Church Road. After looking through the purse, Roten realized all that had been taken or disturbed was the cash, about 160-dollars, that had been in it. Her ID and various debit and credit cars and check books were still there. Roten called deputies yesterday to report the purse had been found. They list the investigation of the theft as still in progress.