By Joe Johnson
An Athens man was arrested this week for allegedly shooting at car repo men in September and also for sexually assaulting a woman two weeks ago.
After Athens-Clarke County police on Monday received information that 28-year-old Cedrick Demon Mercery was at an apartment on Berlin Street, officers, including a K-9 unit and members of the Strategic Response Team, surrounded the house and made phone contact with occupants of the home.
The occupants, including Mercery complied with commands to come out and Mercery was arrested without incident, according to a police incident report.
The Norwood Court resident was booked into the county jail on warrants charging him with multiple counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, attempted aggravated sodomy, false imprisonment, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and battery, according to the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office.
The alleged assault on the repo men occurred on Sept. 23 on Loblolly Drive, where the repo man used GPS to locate a 2011 Honda Accord owned by a woman who was unaware the vehicle was going to be repossessed, according to a police incident report.
After tracking the car to locations in Athens where the repo men felt unsafe, they reportedly found the car parked for a period of time outside a Loblolly Drive residence, and as they approached the car, someone in the vehicle started it up.
One of the men yelled at the driver that they were there to repossess the car, at which time the car sped off, nearly striking the repo men who had to jump out of the way, according to the police report.
As the car drove toward Freeman Drive, it made a wide right turn and stopped near the beginning of the road, where the driver rolled down the passenger side window and fired a gun three times at the repo men, who dived for cover, according to the report.
Police later recovered three .40-caliber bullet cartridge casings, the report noted.
One of the repo men was able to give police a location of the car, but when officers in marked units made contact with the vehicle it fled on Dr. Martin Luther King Parkway and into the Bethel Homes apartment complex off College Avenue, where the driver abandoned it, according to the report, which noted that mail addressed to Mercery was located in the car, along with what appeared to be heroin and methamphetamine and drug-related objects.
Another car that had been parked at the Loblolly Drive residence was registered to a relative of Mercery, according to the report, and officers who chased the suspect and residents of Bethel Homes identified the suspect was Mercery when shown his photograph.
The second incident occurred the night of Oct. 15 through the next morning at a home on Martin Court, where a 23-year-old woman reported that Mercery assaulted her during a domestic violence incident.
According to a police report, the woman alleged that Mercery had “kidnapped her, choked her, pointed a gun at her while telling her he would shoot her, tried to sodomize her, beat her, and kept her locked up for 11 hours.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Mercery was being held at the Clarke County Jail without bail being set. Additionally, the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office placed a hold on his release due to a felony probation violation.