Santa Claus is driving around

A University of Arizona Police Department officer was patrolling an area near Fourth Street and Cherry Avenue on Oct. 5 and was flagged down by a man who said that in the last 24 hours his wife had been approached by the same man twice. The officer went to visit the man’s wife at her work at the Student Union Memorial Center. The woman said that the night before she had been cleaning the restaurant she worked at prior to closing when she saw a man sitting at one of the tables nearby. 

The man did not speak to her, but he continued to sit at the table using a laptop. That morning, the woman was driving to work and was in the left turn lane of an intersection when a car pulled up next to her on her passenger side. The driver yelled to the woman to roll down her window, but she didn’t. The woman then heard the driver yell at her, “Santa Claus wants to talk to you.” 

The woman looked over and saw that the man driving that car looked similar to the man she had seen in the Student Union the night before. The woman did not know the man and had not seen him before these incidents. The officer told the woman to talk to UAPD if the man came back to her workplace again.

Cooking all day

A resident assistant at Babcock Residence Hall flagged down UAPD officers on Oct. 7 about a man, later identified as a UA student, who walked through the Babcock parking lot and was believed to have marijuana on him. A resident assistant had seen a man near the Warren Tunnel grab several items from the ground and then walk back to the residence hall. When the residence assistant approached the area, it smelled like marijuana and no one else was nearby. 

The RA pointed out the man, and officers saw him enter a communal kitchen. Officers spoke to the man and noticed that he smelled like marijuana and had a glassy look in his eyes. When asked about the marijuana, the man said he couldn’t smell any and that he had been cooking all day and had not left campus. 

The officer had seen the man walking in the parking lot and asked him about it and he said he “had just been walking in the area.” The officer asked the man what was in his pockets and the man said it was his wallet and cigarettes, though he said he had not been smoking. 

The officer got a search warrant approved and found a small clear glass pipe containing marijuana residue in a bowl and found containers holding marijuana buds in the man’s pocket. The man was taken to Pima County Jail and booked for possession of Marijuana and possession of paraphernalia.