A 25-year-old woman was arrested by Athens-Clarke County police charged with stealing a 9-year-old girl’s cell phone.
The girl, a student at an Athens elementary school, had left her purse with the phone and some money in it in a bathroom stall at the Georgia Square Mall on Feb. 13, according to the police incident report.
The girl and her sister went back and got the purse, but it was missing the phone and the cash. As they did, they saw a woman leaving the area with what looked like the phone in her pocket, a pink model with a green tree on it.
The girls told their father what had happened. He went up to the woman police identified as Tamaranesha Burden of Athens who went into the dressing room of another store. He then notified the store manager who found the phone in the pocket of a pair of jeans on display in that store.
Police were called to the scene, stopped Burden to talk with her, and found $4,356 in cash in her purse. There was $4,320 on one side of a wallet, and $36 on the other.
According to the report, Burden denied stealing the purse. And her cousin, who was with her at the mall, said they had both just gotten their income tax returns and that Burden had her own phone.
Burden was arrested on a charge of theft by taking.
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