Has the south Cobb 'trash bomber' been caught?
Jun. 25—For Mableton resident Melinda McBee, it was a sight all too familiar. On the morning of June 12, she took her dog outside and found hundreds, perhaps thousands of small paper scraps strewn about the foot of her driveway. The mysterious 'trash bomber' that has plagued Mableton and other areas of south Cobb for years had struck again.
For years, an unidentified assailant has cut 1-inch-by-1-inch squares of paper, packing them into a grocery bag and tossing the bags from a moving vehicle, causing the bags to burst and scatter on people's driveways and front yards.
Residents have long said the bandit strikes at night or in the early hours of the morning. According to a June 2019 MDJ report, such incidents had been reported to police more than 30 times.
Upon further investigation, McBee realized the culprit had hit six different locations on her street, Glore Road. McBee herself has been trash bombed once or twice a year since she moved into her current house six years ago, she said.
"The first time it happens, it's a little frustrating," McBee said. "The second time you get mad, the third time you get irate. ... If you've never had this happen to you, you think it's funny — it's not. ... When the bag hits the ground, it bursts open, and they go everywhere."
McBee raked up the pieces with her hands and was almost finished when she made a discovery. Examining a piece of paper, she thought she was holding part of a prescription label.
"And so, I took it all into my front porch and dumped it out ... and went through piece by piece, it must have been 1,000 or more, and I was able to put together about 90% of a label. And it had his name and his address and other information."
She turned the label over to Cobb Police. Wednesday evening, she got a call from a detective.
Cobb Police confirmed to the MDJ that Terry Clayton, 68, of Smyrna, is suspected of "trash bombing" McBee's home. Clayton was issued a citation for littering, but Cobb Police spokesperson S.A. Barner couldn't say for sure whether police believe Clayton to be responsible for the other incidents.
"I guess because of his age, and his health, it was just the citation, so he wasn't technically arrested," Barner said. Barner added that Clayton likely received a fine but was not sure Thursday for how much.
McBee said the detective, whose name she could not recall, told her that police went to Clayton's Smyrna home and confronted him. The detective said Clayton said he cut up the paper due to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The police "asked him why he threw it out the window. He said he had no answer to that," McBee said. "And they told him that basically, you know, 'We know it's you. If this should happen again, we're coming (back)."
Barner couldn't confirm McBee's account of the confrontation between police and Clayton as she was not able to reach the detective on the case by press time Thursday.
For McBee, there's no doubt police cited the right man.
"It feels really, really good to finally have caught this guy," she said, later adding that on social media sites such as Facebook and Nextdoor, "People are absolutely irate over this."
Barner said there were no further details available but that more information may be provided later.
