‘Everything’s quiet’: Neighbors thankful after Cherryville police shut down crime-ridden home

From the sounds of gunfire to much-needed silence - Cherryville police say a crime-ridden house has been shut down after hundreds of calls, and now neighbors say they’re finding relief.

Channel 9′s Ken Lemon found a six-foot-tall sign in front of a home on North Pine Street. Some may consider the “No trespassing” sign an eyesore, but not these neighbors. The sign means police can arrest suspicious people at the home.

“An answered prayer, a blessing,” said Matt Aldridge, a neighbor who lives a stone’s throw from the home.

Police say they responded to the problem home more than 300 times in the past two and a half years. It included drug overdoses, assaults, fires, and crowds throughout the night.

Aldridge said people in the otherwise quiet community believed that at any moment, they could become unintended victims of whatever happened here.

“There was a fear that eventually there was going to be a transaction, a deal, whatever, that goes wrong,” Aldridge told Lemon.

He says his young children have witnessed fights, and his nine-year-old daughter was too scared to wait for the school bus at the end of the driveway.

“On multiple occasions they would run inside and say they just saw a drug deal,” Aldridge said.

Police teamed up with Alcohol Law Enforcement. Instead of asking a judge to declare the home a nuisance, they found family members who owned the house, and officers got them to sign over limited power attorney to the police department.

Now, officers can arrest almost anyone they find on the property.

Alridge said neighbors lived in fear before the sign went up.

“Everything’s quiet,” he said. “[The feeling of] what’s about to happen? That went away with this sign, a signal of change.”

Some neighbors didn’t want to talk on camera, still concerned about the people who used to frequent this house. But they say the sign has made a huge difference, and they say one family member has plans to rebuild the home and sell it.

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