A convenience store in College Hill Courts shut down Thursday after prosecutors convinced a judge it had become a public nuisance and a hotbed of criminal activity.
“[Westside Shop] is the site of a disproportionate amount of illegal activity,” Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston wrote in a 47-page petition. “Between Jan. 1, 2014, and April 1, 2016, officers from the Chattanooga Police Department have responded to the store over 200 times for complaints that include disorders, fights, narcotics violations, robberies, shootings and other criminal offenses.”
Officers, deputies and codes enforcement employees padlocked the shop, part of a storefront in one of the city’s 17 public housing developments, around lunchtime. Westside owner Salma Ambo could not be reached for comment Thursday. But she can fight the nuisance abatement during a hearing May 2 at 8:30 a.m. before Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Tom Greenholtz, who approved a temporary order of Pinkston’s petition.
“The owners can remedy it,” said defense attorney Bill Speek. “But they have to show some plan to counterbalance the criminal activity. They’d have to have some sort of plan to reopen.”
Westside is the only store within walking distance of many poor black families who don’t have the resources or transportation to buy food elsewhere, activists and some community members said Thursday.