Beaufort County mom helps solve car break-in cases after searching teen’s bedroom

A local 16-year-old’s plan to ransack cars for cash in the Port Royal area was foiled not by local police, but by his mother.

The 36-year-old mom, a resident of the Shell Point neighborhood, searched her son’s bedroom last week to find a number of strange items, including a keychain with unfamiliar keys, a glut of firearm paraphernalia, a small glass breaker tool, a marijuana grinder and three South Carolina driver’s licenses that did not belong to him. On Thursday morning, she called Beaufort County deputies, who also notified the Port Royal Police Department.

Port Royal officers determined most of the found items had previously been reported stolen from car break-ins around town, according to an incident report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. The keys, licenses and glass breaker were turned over to Port Royal police, while other evidence that couldn’t be linked to existing thefts was placed in the county’s evidence locker, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.

Police returned one of the stolen licenses to its owner in Beaufort, who told officers she thought she had lost her wallet at the Walmart on Robert Smalls Parkway. Her missing debit cards were not found in the teen’s bedroom, suggesting the valuable items from the stolen wallets were being held somewhere else.

Capt. John Griffith, a spokesperson for Port Royal police, would not specify how many cases the stolen items were linked to because some thefts “are still actively being investigated.” The department had petitioned the teen to family court, which is South Carolina’s process of charging minors with criminal offenses.

The same teen was reported missing by the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office as the situation unraveled. The day before his mother contacted police about the stolen items, he reportedly “walked away from his home in Shell Point and never returned.” He had returned home as of Monday afternoon, his mother said.