Failure to appear catches up to 4

That latter scenario happened to two people last week in Commerce.

An officer pulled over Linda Sue Studer, 46, 275 Rattle Trap Road, Commerce, for driving with a cracked windshield. When checking her identification, he found that her driver’s license was suspended for failure to appear.

And Fernando Cardenas-Rivas, 42, 2665 Oak Log Way, Buford, was pulled over for doing 91 miles per hour on Interstate 85 and also had a license suspended for failure to appear.
Two other people’s failure to appear also caught up with them last week.

Kenneth Wayne Ayers, 2434 Kesler Road, Carnesville, was taken into custody for a failure to appear warrant from Franklin County as an officer stopped for a disabled vehicle on U.S. 441. There was no indication of the original charge.

Joe David Parham, 69, 4372 Comer Paoli Road, Comer, was arrested on a failure to appear warrant for an original charge of driving with an expired tag. After he paid off all of the charges, police released him.

Other Charges

The Commerce Police Department made the following charges during the past week:

•Richard Darrell Gaines, 43, 462 Victoria Way, Commerce, first-degree forgery. Gaines is charged with forging a check for $109.73, one of several checks he allegedly stole from a 59-year-old white female relative. The report indicated he had forged six others elsewhere.

•Travis Loyd Martin, 24, 130 Chateau Terrace, Apartment 11, Athens, obstruction. He was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over on U.S. 441 for following too closely and gave police a false name because he thought there were warrants outstanding against him.

•Scott C. Elliott, 32, 3 Melissa Road, Kingston, NY, driving too fast for conditions, failure to maintain a lane and misdemeanor possession of marijuana. The charges came after an accident on I-85 in which Elliott told the officer he lost control of his vehicle on the wet roadway. The vehicle went up an embankment and struck a tree. The officer observed that a passenger appeared to be under the influence of something, and under the passenger side of the car he found a small amount of marijuana. A search of the vehicle turned up a glass pipe with marijuana residue in a suitcase in the back seat. Both the driver and the passenger initially denied knowledge of the marijuana, but the report said that Elliott ultimately took full responsibility.

•Labache Depaul Gill, 32, 97 Marion Drive, Jefferson, driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol, driving with a suspended license, a window tint violation, a tire violation, defective equipment and an outstanding warrant from Jackson County. The officer made the traffic stop for the window tint violation and noted that Gill’s eyes were bloodshot and glassy and noticed the odor of alcohol. Gill said he’d consumed two and a half beers earlier and admitted that his license was suspended for prior DUIs.

•Nicolas Albert Slayton, 25, 19 Cedar Drive, Commerce, arrested on a child support warrant after an officer “came into contact with” Slayton at 2 a.m. on Wilhard Street downtown.

•Ashley Mincey, 26, 935 Homer Road, Lot 36, Commerce, picked up at her residence on an unspecified warrant from Oconee County.