LEWISTON — A 26-year-old Lisbon man police said drove a truck through entrance doors at the Auburn Mall was arrested Sunday.
Tyler Nickerson
Tyler Nickerson was charged with aggravated criminal mischief, a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. He also was charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving property damage, operating without a license and violation of condition of release, all misdemeanors.
He was held overnight at Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn and appeared in 8th District Court on Monday, where he was released on personal recognizance.
Conditions of his release include not returning to the Auburn Mall and residing at Granite Bay Care in Gray, a multi-state human service agency providing intensive clinical, nursing, residential, and community-based support services to adults with cognitive, intellectual, mental health, and physical disabilities, according to the organization’s website.
Police said they stopped Nickerson shortly after midnight as he was driving a Toyota Tundra pickup truck on Union and Hampshire streets. The truck’s taillight covers had been broken, Officer Katherine Avery wrote in a sworn statement.
“Tyler seemed to be acting odd and kept rambling about various things,” she wrote in an affidavit.
Another officer noticed broken glass in the bed of the truck as well as on the bumper.
Avery discovered Nickerson was driving without a license and had been reported as a missing person in Cumberland County. He also was on bail for a felony charge, she wrote. He had been the suspect in a 2012 vehicle theft, she wrote.
Dispatchers said the truck Nickerson was driving Sunday had been stolen, but the owner had declined to press charges.
Avery wrote that an entrance at the Auburn Mall had been breached by a vehicle. Pieces of taillights had been left behind. Avery took them to where the truck had been towed and they fit its broken taillights.
The stores within the mall were secure, she wrote.
The damage at the mall included several broken doors and windows, she wrote. Tire marks indicate the damage had been intentional and the driver “had driven into the doors and then back into the doors to cause more damage,” she wrote.
A supervisor at the group home said Nickerson climbed out a window at the home Sunday morning, Avery wrote. The supervisor said Nickerson had been out on bail pending a deferred plea on a similar incident last year.
When he spoke with Avery later at the jail, he said a friend must have stolen the truck before giving it to him to drive. He denied any knowledge of broken glass at the mall.
Nickerson is scheduled to be back in court in January.
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