Man pleads guilty in incident with deputies; charges against daughter dropped

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, December 1, 2009

By Cyntra Brown
Salisbury PostA father and daughter who got into a confrontation with personnel at the Rowan County Detention Center in April appeared in court Monday.
Damon Bingamon pleaded guilty in Rowan County District Court to injury to personal property and second-degree trespassing.
Charges against his daughter, Avalon, 16, were dropped.
Judge Kevin Eddinger presided over the case.
Bingamon, 40, said he entered the plea because he would have “had to go against the officers,” if he didn’t.
Bingamon said he was intoxicated at Baylee’s Steakhouse the night of his arrest. He said he accidentally broke a mirror in the restaurant bathroom as he was ripping off a fingernail from a prior injury.
He said he’d had three shots of tequila, which gave him the courage to remove the nail and in the process his arm damaged the bathroom mirror.
Bingamon then said he went back to his table to tell his companions, including his daughter, what happened. He wanted to speak to the manager and explain the incident.
While a friend checked out the damage, Bingamon was arrested for destruction of property and questioned about a fight that had resulted in the damaged mirror.
Bingamon denied getting into a fight with another person and said that was a rumor.
Bingamon was taken to the Rowan County Detention Center. After his bail was posted, he said he tried to get information from the Rowan County Magistrate’s Office to file a complaint against Salisbury Officer T.J. Crews and other officers at the jail.
He said Crews had been disrespectful while dealing with him and his daughter.
Bingamon said he pressed the intercom button once and calmly explained he wanted information on Crews and the others.
He told a Post reporter in April he wanted to file a complaint about his ill treatment inside the county jail.
“Within a matter of minutes,” he said, “I was surrounded by about five officers.”
They kept asking him to leave without providing him any of the information he asked about, Bingamon said.
“I just wanted to do what was right.” he said.
He refused to leave and was arrested again, and his daughter, who could not leave, got caught in the dispute.
“I only have my permit, and my phone was dead,” Avalon Bingamon said.
She said she was scared and didn’t know what to do.
An officer kept asking her to back away, but she only complied when her father told her to “listen to the officer.”
She was charged with resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer and spent several hours in jail.
Damon Bingamon was given 30 days in jail, which was suspended to 18 months of unsupervised probation. He also has to pay $50 in restitution and court costs. He must also not go to Baylee’s Steakhouse.
Bingamon said he regretted not telling the truth in the first place. The situation got out of hand and information was misconstrued, he said.
“I should have told the truth,” Bingamon said.