Trash-can complaint leads to burglary arrest in Charleston

A complaint that vagrants were stealing trash cans from a downtown Charleston apartment building led police to a stash of stolen items.

Police got a call about 2 p.m. Wednesday that vagrants were taking city trash containers from 329 East Bay St., according to the incident report from Charleston City Police.

While police were investigating, a man called out from across the street that he had seen somebody taking trash cans from the building the night before. After talking to the man, police determined that he had taken several trash cans, stored them in some bushes across the street, and filled them with items taken from one of the apartments, according to the report.

Inside the big green trash containers, police found a 47-inch and 37-inch flat-screen television, 30 DVDs, a Nikon Coolpix camera, a color printer, a Dell laptop computer and a blue-ray DVD player, according to the report.

A resident told police somebody had taken the bars off her window and the items were missing from her apartment. She also said several liquor bottles were missing; police did not find those in the trash cans.

John Henry Newkirk of Pawleys Island, 48, was arrested and charged with second-degree burglary. He told police he often slept in the bushes across the street from the apartment complex, according to the report. He is being held in the Charleston County jail on $25,000 bail.

Reach Dave Munday at 937-5553 or twitter.com/dmunday.