Bowling Green Police arrested a man Wednesday for spray painting items in the North Enterprise Street area.
Samuel DeMelo, 20, of Bowling Green, was charged with criminal mischief, possessing criminal tools, and underage consumption.
Police were called at 1:57 a.m. about a man spray painting a dumpster in the 700 block of North Enterprise Street. He was described as white, with a tie dye shirt, riding a skateboard toward campus.
Officers from the city and university police could not locate him.
An officer talked with the person who called in the spray painting, and checked her vehicle for damage. There was none. She told police that she had heard noise outside and looked out her window. She reportedly saw the man shaking a spray paint can, then painting the dumpster.
The caller then activated the panic alarm on her car, which caused the man to leave.
The dumpster had “ghost 419” painted in gold.
At 2:33 a.m., an officer saw a man on a skateboard with a tie dye shirt in the area of Manville and Wooster. The man was stopped, and an officer noticed a bulge and heard the rattle of a spray paint can in the man’s sweatshirt pocket.
DeMelo had a gold can of spray paint, and gold paint on his fingers. He reportedly admitted to painting electrical boxes, generators, transformers, and tagging stuff around town. He said his tag was “ghost 419.”
He reportedly denied painting the dumpster, but when police showed him a photo of the dumpster, he said “yep, that is me.”
An officer smelled the odor of an alcoholic beverage on DeMelo, who said he had consumed one beer at his residence on North Enterprise.
While being transported to the Wood County Jail, DeMelo asked the officer if he could text his boss, and he was allowed to do so.
Police later found other sites painted by DeMelo, including a railroad storage shed near the tracks, and an electrical box on Thurstin Avenue.
