`Nothing to do,' teen says, so we
stole a police car and burned it.

By Kirk Loggins / Tennessean Staff Writer / 2-2-99

A Goodlettsville teen-ager testified yesterday that
he and a friend were just riding around, talking
about stealing a car radio, on the night they wound
up stealing, looting and burning a Metro police
cruiser.

"We didn't have nothing to do" on June 8, 1998,
Charles White, 17, explained during a Juvenile
Court hearing for his friend, Jonathan Cole
Mangrum, also 17.

White said Mangrum got out of his car, in the
parking lot at the Lodge North Apartments on
Moss Trail Road, and returned moments later with
the keys to a police car that was parked nearby.

White said Mangrurn then drove the police car,
with blue lights, to a nearby trailer park, where
they picked up their friend, Christopher Paul Haas.

But White said Mangrum was such a bad driver --
"swerving all over the road" -- that White took
charge of the police car at the trailer park and
drove it to a field off Dickerson Road.

White said Haas, who is also 17, and Mangrum
followed in White's car.

Mangrum took a shotgun from the police car,
White said, while he took other valuable items.

"We did it like a team, like."

White said he saw no need to burn the police
cruiser, since he was wearing gloves he found in 
the car and was confident his fingerprints would
not be found.

But, White said, his two friends used chemicals
they found in the trunk of the police car to set fire
to papers they found inside.

"It went up like a torch," he said.

Auto theft and arson charges are pending against
all three boys in Juvenile Court, but prosecutors
are trying to have Mangrum, who is currently in
the custody of the Department of Children's
Services on other charges of delinquency,
transferred to Criminal Court to be tried as an
adult.

Mangrum is also being prosecuted on charges that
he broke into three cars last August.

Judge Betty Adams Green recessed yesterday's
hearing until a later date, to hear testimony 
about Mangrum's mental condition.


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