Lewis County Herald - Serving Hohenwald, Lewis County Tennessee Since 1898

by Amanda Curtis,

Staff Reporter

According to Hohenwald Chief of Police Kip Kelsey, 'it's not that we thought he was heading to the school necessarily. We were thinking, if he were to see us looking for him through the neighborhoods, he may run and do anything to get away from us, including running into a door of the school. From myself, the Chief, to the Assistant Chief, SRO's, patrolmen and sergeants, as well as the Sheriff's Department, and school personel all responded swiftly, and I can't say enough positive things about the way everyone worked together to handle the situation. I'm very proud of that."

On January 24th, businesses and schools in Hohenwald went on lockdown. The reason? A report of a robbery had just occurred. At 8:26 a.m., the Hohenwald Police Department received a call from Family Dollar Manager Tiffany Simanson stating she had just been robbed of the store's deposit, accounting for $5372.84, by a male wearing all black.

After an hour of searching neighborhoods, houses and businesses to no avail, Investigator Brent Bridges decided to dig further for information. "I knew from previous, unrelated investigations that a camera on a nearby business would catch the parking lot of Family Dollar. In the video footage, I could see a person leave the store just before the call was made, walk to their vehicle and then back inside. I also noticed no one ran up behind this person. After confirming that it was her in the video, I called her in to the office for another interview, at which time I read her her rights."

Immediately, through tears, the Family Dollar manager confessed that she was not robbed but instead took the money herself. "When I asked her about recovering the money," said Bridges, "she said there was no money to recover." According to Mrs. Simanson, she had been taking money from deposits for several months and had gotten behind on taking them to the bank. She was informed by her bosses that they would coming to the store to do an internal audit of inventory on February 1st. Knowing the likelihood of them finding the money missing, along with the inability to pay it all back, which she says she intended to do with her tax return, she claimed she got robbed.

At the end of the investigation, Simanson admitted to taking a total of $6356 over 10 months, in the form of $5800 cash, approximately $400 in products, as well as committing refund fraud. She was charged with Filing a False Report as well as Theft Over $2500. "Filing a false report, says Kelsey, "is a very serious charge. The resources wasted during that time could have been vital to another situation. It's the part that bothers me the most."