TIFTON — A Tifton man was stabbed Friday several hours after his business on Tift Avenue was burglarized, and in a separate incident two people were arrested and charged with the burglary of a local pawn shop.

According to the Tifton Police Department incident report, at 2:15 p.m. Friday, Robert Harry Doolan Jr., 60, reported a burglary at Tifton Dental Studio at 419 N. Tift Ave. Doolan told the officer that he had gone back to his office and found the north side office window broken. The only items he reported missing were numerous coins valued at approximately $50. He told the officer that he had gone inside and no one was in the building.

According to a second incident report, an officer was called to the business again just after 5 p.m. The report states that Doolan had seen a white male wearing a blue jacket walking through the alley behind his property and that the man walked past his property and then back to his property. The officer wrote that Doolan told him the man entered the back yard area and was walking towards the area of the office building.

The officer wrote that Doolan told him he went outside and confronted the man and attempted to get him to stay at the premises until police arrived so that the man could be questioned.

Doolan told police he grabbed the man and a fight followed during which the man pulled a knife and stabbed Doolan three times — once in the right chest area and the others in his left side. It was then, Doolan told the officer, that he called E-911 for help.

Doolan was transported to Tift Regional Medical Center for treatment. A spokesman for the hospital said Saturday that Doolan had been released.

Christopher R. Peters, who is listed as being born in 1962, of 32 Briarwood Court, Lenox, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. No photograph of Peters was available from the Tifton Police Department or the Tift County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday.

In an unrelated incident, two people were arrested Friday and charged with burglarizing Taps Pawn at 405 W. Seventh St. According to the incident report, TPD officer Brian Rhodes responded to an alarm at the pawn shop. When he arrived, he saw a white female attempting to conceal herself in the rear east corner of the building. The woman, Rhodes wrote, was later identified as Melinda Rivera, born in 1977 and residing at 1304 S. Ridge Ave. Rhodes wrote that when he questioned her, she told him that she was behind the building trying to use the bathroom.

Rhodes stated that while he was speaking with Rivera, he noticed a section of the roof to the pawn shop had been peeled back, exposing the inside of the building. Rhodes then placed Rivera in his patrol car so that he could determine if a burglary had taken place. An employee of the pawn shop then arrived with a key and opened the front door to the business. It was then, Rhodes stated, that a black male wearing a tan checkered coat and tan or brown pants came out of the hole in the roof.

Rhodes wrote that he told the man to stop and show him his hands, at which time the man put his hands up in the air and started to walk backwards towards the peak of the roof and then down the other side of the roof and onto the ground. Rhodes wrote that he and TPD detective Lee Dunston started to chase the man on foot across Seventh Street and into the Tifton Auto Sales parking lot. Rhodes wrote that he and Dunston jumped two fences behind the suspect before losing sight of him in a patch of woods between 11th Street and College Avenue.

Rhodes said that a perimeter was set up around the woods and a K-9 team from Turner County was called in. He wrote that the dogs were able to track the man to Peterson Apartments, but that the officers were unable to locate him in any of the apartments. Rivera was then transported to the Tift County Jail and charged with burglary. Marcus Lavar Ludden, born in 1978 and residing at 1304 S. Ridge Ave., was arrested on Saturday at 1909 S. Ridge Ave. and also charged with burglary.

No photographs of Rivera or Ludden were available Saturday.



To contact senior reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321.