Tennessee trio accused of renting out Airbnb in order to ‘terrorize’ WNC community

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    MADISON COUNTY, North Carolina (WLOS) — The Madison County Sheriff’s Office has arrested three individuals who they said rented a nearby Airbnb and terrorized the community for several weeks.

Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood said that they arrested the trio on June 5.

“The past month, we’ve had over 48 breaking and enterings ranging from cars, outbuildings, spread all over the county,” he said.

He said there were several videos that detectives had watched, and from those videos, they determined the trio was allegedly committing the crimes from 2-4:30 a.m.

That led Harwood to switch all detectives to work the late night shift where they were eventually able to track the suspects down at a gas station in Mars Hill last Wednesday.

“My detectives ID’ed those folks and immediately knew those were the folks that had been doing the breaking and enterings in the county,” he said.

When they arrested the three, Harwood said that they also found a stolen firearm out of Kentucky in the truck the suspects were in.

Following the arrest, the sheriff’s office was also able to determine that the three had been renting an Airbnb in Barnardsville and continued to go into Madison County to allegedly terrorize the community, as Harwood described it.

“They loved doing car B & E’s, they would steal hand tools, anything that they could grab easily and put into the back of their truck and they had a supplier that they were selling this stuff to,” he said.

The suspects are originally from Elizabethton, Tennessee and Sheriff Harwood said they were also suspects in breaking and entering cases in Tennessee as well.

The oldest suspect, 39-year-old Kevin Craig, is a convicted felon but Harwood said he’s unsure of the relation between the three.

“Individuals from Tennessee that came to North Carolina on a crime spree,” he described them.

Harwood said that individuals using Airbnb’s as a host to commit their crimes has become an increasing problem in the Madison County community.

“It’s a good nest for individuals who want to commit crimes to come in and stay two or three days and be gone,” he said.

While both Harwood and the community are feeling relief that these suspects are off the street, he did advise any residents who don’t already have a security camera system around their home to add one.

“They make our jobs much easier whenever a crime does occur,” he said.

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