Nobody broke into the Mavis Tires and Brakes on Chastain Meadows Parkway. Nobody had to. According to Cobb County court records, the man loading tires into a truck after hours simply had a manager waiting to let him in.
That’s the detail that turns this from a small-time theft blotter item into something worth a longer look. Darren Manson, a former employee at the store, and Paul Helton, the manager who ran it, are accused of working together between June 5 and July 11 to move 438 tires out the back door — an estimated $89,579 worth of inventory. Manson is now sitting in the Cobb County Jail without bond. Helton, as of this writing, doesn’t appear in jail records at all.
This isn’t really a story about a guy who stole some tires. It’s a story about who a tire shop actually trusts to protect its inventory, and what happens when that person is allegedly the threat…