DIXFIELD — The Police Department responded to 31 calls for service from Feb. 23 to March 6, including some phone scams, Chief Jeff Howe said Friday morning.
“We’ve been getting buried with fraudulent phone calls, ranging from IRS scams to fake winnings scams,” he said. He attributed the volume to tax return season.
The IRS scams involve a caller telling people that they owe money and need to pay it or they will be arrested.
The fake winnings calls tell people they have to send money to receive their “winnings.”
“When you get these calls, just hang up and don’t engage with them at all, but definitely let us know about them,” Howe said.
The Police Department phone number is 207-562-4517.
“We definitely want to be kept alert to these calls,” he said. “The most frustrating thing is they are targeting our elderly citizens over and over again.”
Howe said a good number of the callers are overseas but are using a phone number generated by a computer and it shows up on caller IDs. However, there isn’t any way to track it back to the person who is calling, he said.
In other police news, Dixfield officer Dustin Broughton responded to a call Wednesday to assist a Franklin County deputy sheriff in finding a young man said to be pointing a rifle at traffic on Route 142 in Carthage.
Howe said Broughton found the man, who has no home address, on Grover Bridge Road off Route 142 and detained him there until the deputy could arrive to interview him. The gun was an air pellet rifle. Howe said the young man was lucky in that none of the targeted drivers shot him for pointing a rifle at them.
Franklin County deputy Lt. David Rackliff said Friday that no charges were brought against the young man.
On Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., officer Anne Simmons-Edmunds responded to a traffic accident on Route 2 near M/T Pockets. A tractor-trailer truck driven by Darryl Curtis, 52, struck a deer, killing it. The end of the truck was cracked.
On Monday at 3:45 p.m., someone reported a Mossberg pump-action shotgun was stolen from a home between 2013 and 2014. “We have leads we’re following up on,” Howe said.
* On Sunday at about 9 a.m., a Dixfield and Mexico police officer were sent to the fuel station at Towles Corner Store on Routes 2 and 142 for an accidental discharge of dry chemicals.
* On Feb. 25 at about 4:50 p.m., a Eustis Ridge Road resident reported the theft of an Arctic Cat snowmobile cowling from a sled parked on the private road in front of the house. Howe said he believes the theft happened between 8 and 10 a.m. that day. He said the cowling on similar Arctic Cat models is valued at $750. He is working on a possible lead.
* On Feb. 24 at 2:30 p.m., Odilia Fletcher, 45, of Weld, struck a deer on Weld Street with her 2006 Ford pickup truck. The deer was killed and the truck’s front end received significant damage, Howe said. Fletcher was not hurt and was able to drive the truck from the scene.
Howe said drivers should be alert for deer on roads because they’re trying to get out of the deep snow.
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