Staff writer
More charges are pending against a Hillsboro teen who was arrested on aggravated assault and multiple drug charges about a month ago.
Clayton Tate Lingenfelter, 18, Hillsboro, is a suspect in an investigation involving criminal damage of a street sign at 1st and Main Sts in Hillsboro.
At 11 p.m. Saturday, Hillsboro Police Chief Dan Kinning and officer Jessey Hiebert investigated a report of a group of juveniles out after curfew, one of which was allegedly damaging a street sign.
“We think they took off after they saw the person who reported them,” Kinning said. “We confronted what we believed was the group in front of Dale’s Supermarket. They denied everything.”
After Kinning and Hiebert left, Kinning located the 1st and Main St. signs from where they had been broken off and dropped, and each officer spoke to juveniles who allegedly knew of or witnessed Lingenfelter jump up and grab the sign, pulling it back and forth until it broke off at its mount.
Later, Kinning said, Lingenfelter allegedly confessed to Hiebert that he broke the sign that night. He was not arrested at the time because that specific crime was a misdemeanor, Kinning said.
However, Kinning identified Lingenfelter as a suspect in investigations involving 13 street sign thefts over the course of several months from places in Hillsboro, Marion, Newton, and rural parts of Marion County.
The stolen signs were recovered, but they were not in Lingenfelter’s possession, Kinning said. They were recovered from a house of one of Lingenfelter’s friends after the owner gave police permission to search the residence.
“There is enough evidence to show probable cause for the criminal damage to the sign in Hillsboro and the theft of the 13 signs,” Kinning said.
Lingenfelter already faces charges from a month ago of possession of marijuana with intent to sell, aggravated assault with a BB gun that resembled and was presented as a .44 magnum, and possession of prescription medications that were not assigned to him.