Man Was Walking Home, But Ended Up in Jail Instead

An Auburn man who was walking home after midnight recently ended up in the county jail because of what police found in a backpack he says wasn’t his.

Police say he was walking in the eastbound lane on Winder Highway near Lakeside Drive and carrying a backpack, which he dropped and walked away from when he was stopped around 1 p.m. May 11. A car had to swerve to avoid missing him, police said.

The officer asked him what he was doing, and he replied that he had been dropped off at Ga. 316 and Winder Highway by a taxi and was walking the rest of the way to Auburn. The officer also noticed the man seemed nervous and couldn’t stand still.

The officer then asked why the man dropped the backpack. He said it wasn’t his, he found it on the highway and he wasn’t really carrying it, but rather “kicking it down the road,” according to the incident report.

The man said he was going to keep it because “he like the Atlanta Braves and the bag was a Braves bag.”

The officer further wrote, “I asked him if the bag did not belong to him, was [it] all right for me to search it.”

The man said yes.

Police found a small brown box with a moon and stars on it, and a plastic bag containing a white crystal substance, which later tested positive for methamphetamine, according to the incident report. Also found was a bank receipt with the man’s credit card number on it.

Kolby Quiett, 31, of Auburn was arrested and charged with meth possession.

Quiett was combative after being handcuffed, swearing at officers, kicking the back passenger window of the patrol car and trying to bite one of the officers when they shackled his legs to keep him from kicking.