ST. GEORGE — A local man was arrested during an unrelated incident involving a verbal dispute that brought several officers to Main Street Tuesday.
On Tuesday afternoon, officers responded to South Main Street on a report of a family fight and arrived to find the incident involved only a verbal altercation, according to the probable cause statement filed in support of the arrest.
While speaking to one of the men involved in the argument, identified as 37-year-old Steven Mawhorter, officers recovered a bank card as well as a Utah Privilege card, neither of which belonged to the suspect.
According to police, Mawhorter said he found the cards lying on the ground in the parking lot near a car at the Red Roof Inn and placed them in his pocket to return them to the owner.
When asked why he still had them, the suspect said he had not had time to do so yet. As officers questioned the suspect further, Mawhorter confirmed that the woman he was with at the time of the incident did in fact have a cell phone, but told police he had made no attempt to find the owner of the cards because the cell phone was dead.
He said he found them in the parking lot near a car, and he placed them in his pocket to return them. He also said he did not know the individual named on the cards.
The report also stated that the cards were allegedly found in the parking lot six hours before the argument that summoned police, yet the suspect had made no attempt to turn them into the police station, nor did he take any steps to find the rightful owner.
When asked what he was doing over the last six hours that kept him from returning the cards, he said “he was fighting with his girlfriend and having a picnic,” the officer noted in the report.
Officers then contacted the individual named on the cards, who told police the items were stolen from her vehicle earlier in the year, adding that she never reported the incident because “none of the officers would listen to her.”
She also told officers she did not know the suspect, nor did she know why he would have her cards.
Mawhorter was arrested and booked into Purgatory Correctional Facility facing one third-degree felony count of unlawful acquisition of a financial card and misdemeanor possession of another’s identity documents. He was later released on his own recognizance.
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