State v. McDaniel

817 S.E.2d 6, 259 N.C. App. 682
CourtCourt of Appeals of North Carolina
DecidedMay 15, 2018
DocketCOA17-856
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 817 S.E.2d 6 (State v. McDaniel) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. McDaniel, 817 S.E.2d 6, 259 N.C. App. 682 (N.C. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinions

McGEE, Chief Judge.

*682Mollie Elizabeth B. McDaniel ("Defendant") appeals her convictions for felonious *8breaking and entering and larceny after breaking and entering. For the reasons discussed below, we vacate Defendant's convictions.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

Daniel Sheline ("Mr. Sheline") inherited five acres of real property and a three-bedroom house located at 30 Woody Street in Marion, North Carolina, in February 2014. Mr. Sheline visited the house at 30 Woody Street on 20 March 2014 to "check on it, [and] make sure nothing had been bothered." Mr. Sheline observed a number of items of personal property in the house during the 20 March 2014 visit, including an aluminum ladder and push lawnmower, both in the basement; an *683unrestored cuckoo clock; miscellaneous furniture; aluminum pots and pans; heirloom china; an Atari electronic gaming system; and a monitor heater, located behind the front door of the house, which was wired and plumbed through copper tubing to a kerosene oil tank outside the house. The monitor heater was in working order, the copper tubing was intact, and there was kerosene in the outside oil tank.

When Mr. Sheline left the house on 20 March 2014, he locked the front door's knob lock. Mr. Sheline did not have a key to the deadbolt lock, which could only be locked from the inside, so he left the deadbolt unlocked. The door to the basement of the house was pulled shut and secured from the inside with a padlock that "had a screwdriver through it [so that] nobody could open it from the outside." Mr. Sheline testified "[t]he only way ... [to] open [the basement door] would be to crawl through a window or have a key and go down the [interior] steps and open it [from inside the house]." The house also had a side door that was nailed shut. Mr. Sheline posted a "no trespassing" sign on the front door of the house, and stated that, as of 20 March 2014, "[n]o one [else] had permission to go into the house at all."

When Mr. Sheline returned to the house at 30 Woody Street on 1 April 2014, the deadbolt to the front door was locked and the doorknob lock was unlocked. The basement door and a window next to the basement door were both open, and the padlock to the basement door was missing. As Mr. Sheline walked up the stairs from the basement into the house, he smelled a strong odor of kerosene. He "found the whole living room floor was full of [leaked] kerosene and the monitor heater was missing." The piping from the heater to the outside oil tank had been cut and the copper tubing was missing. Mr. Sheline noticed that other items were missing from the house, including the aluminum ladder, lawnmower, and cuckoo clock. The house's electrical wiring had been ripped from the electric box and removed, and various plumbing fixtures were also missing. Mr. Sheline's wife called the police to report the stolen property.

Lieutenant Detective Andy Manis ("Lt. Det. Manis") of the McDowell County Sherriff's Office ("MCSO") received information on 2 April 2014 that the property missing from the house at 30 Woody Street was located at a house at 24 Ridge Street. Lt. Det. Manis went to investigate and found a monitor heater, lawnmower, aluminum ladder, pipes, and wiring outside the residence at 24 Ridge Street. Lt. Det. Manis knocked on the door. Stephanie Rice ("Ms. Rice") answered the door and provided information to Lt. Det. Manis indicating a person driving a white pickup truck had unloaded the property at 24 Ridge Street earlier that day.

*684Mr. Sheline later identified the items found at 24 Ridge Street as the property missing from 30 Woody Street.

Detective Jason Grindstaff ("Det. Grindstaff") of the MCSO received a report on 4 April 2014 that someone had again entered the house at 30 Woody Street, left in a white pickup truck, and turned down Ridge Street. Det. Grindstaff went to Ridge Street and found a white Chevrolet pickup truck parked directly across the street from the house at 24 Ridge Street. Defendant was sitting in the driver's side of the truck. Det. Grindstaff asked Defendant for identification and permission to search the vehicle. With Defendant's permission, Det. Grindstaff searched the truck's interior cabin and outer truck bed. He found an Atari gaming system, glassware, china, and an antique clock in the bed of the truck. Det. Grindstaff arrested Defendant. Mr. Sheline later confirmed the items found in the truck were property from *930 Woody Street. Mr. Sheline testified the property found in the white pickup truck on 4 April 2014 "might have been" in the house at 30 Woody Street when he was there on 1 April 2014.

According to Det. Grindstaff, Defendant said she "got [the property in the pickup truck] from a residence on Woody Street[,]" but indicated "[s]omeone gave her ... permission to go inside the residence and get the property." Defendant stated that a friend of hers, Michael Nichols ("Nichols") "told her a neighbor [of] Mr. Sheline [ ] gave them permission to enter the residence." Defendant also told Det. Grindstaff that Nichols had been at 24 Ridge Street shortly before Det. Grindstaff arrived, but "had just left the residence ... [and] she did not know where [Nichols] was going."

Defendant testified she met Nichols in 2012 and worked with him "doing some salvage work at [an] old abandoned place at 50 Woody Street[,] ... going through and taking some old metal and stuff, working together on that." Defendant stated she and Nichols went to the residence at 30 Woody Street in October 2013 and spoke to an elderly man who answered the door. According to Defendant, the elderly man gave Nichols and Defendant permission to remove a plow and some scrap metal from the basement at 30 Woody Street. Nichols and Defendant took the items to the building at 50 Woody Street, where they were collecting scrap metal to sell. Defendant stopped working with Nichols in late 2013. She collected unemployment benefits for several months and, when those benefits ended, she began working with Nichols again.

Defendant testified that on 2 April 2014, at Nichols's request, she drove a white pickup truck to the building at 50 Woody Street and *685"loaded some stuff on the truck" from a crawl space underneath the building, including a ladder, monitor heater, "and various other things that were all under there in that spot." Defendant testified she believed the items belonged to a friend of Nichols who was storing them at 50 Woody Street. Nichols asked Defendant "to bring the truck up and carry [the property] down [the hill] for him." Defendant testified she drove the items to 24 Ridge Street and deposited them outside the residence, "up against the side of the building."

Defendant testified Nichols called her on 4 April 2014 and

asked me to give him a ride to the scrap yard. He said he had a load of aluminum or something. I got to his house and he said he wasn't ready to go yet, but that I could go up the hill [to the building at 50 Woody Street]. There was still a bunch of stuff over there in the house he thought I might be interested in....

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Related

State v. McDaniel
831 S.E.2d 283 (Supreme Court of North Carolina, 2019)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
817 S.E.2d 6, 259 N.C. App. 682, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mcdaniel-ncctapp-2018.