Police Dispatch

He Has an Ax, But Relax

San Xavier Beat

March 17, 4:26 p.m.

A regular Circle K customer escaped legal punishment after wielding a homemade ax in the convenience store's parking lot, a PCSD report stated.

A deputy responded to a west-side Circle K, where the clerk told him she'd seen a regular customer—a man she knew only by the nickname "Poppa John"—in the parking lot on a bicycle pulling a cart behind it. She said he was then approached by another male regular—this one also on a bicycle (but with no cart)—who evidently knew Poppa John and proceeded to scream at him. She said they then began arguing about something pertaining to a letter the second man had written to Poppa John's wife... until Poppa John pulled out an ax he'd been concealing.

The clerk said she didn't see Poppa John swing the ax or use it in any way—he was simply holding it. But immediately after the weapon appeared, she said, the two men parted ways, riding in opposite directions.

The reporting deputy soon located Poppa John nearby on his bike and pulled him over for questioning. He basically repeated the story told by the Circle K clerk, but adding that the other man in the parking lot had pushed him before he took out the ax; he emphasized that he'd only produced the ax "for his safety if he needed it," only moving it from the cart attached to the rear of his bike to a basket on the front of it. When he showed the deputy the ax—a crudely handmade weapon, fashioned with a bent pipe attached to an old ax head—he said he used it only to break apart TVs when he was looking for scrap metal (not as a weapon, again stressing that it was the other male who'd assaulted him at the Circle K).

The other man was said to live in a nearby trailer park but couldn't be located, so neither subject was arrested.