Chatham County Sheriff Al St Lawrence says his office did nothing wrong in the case of a man who some are calling a stalker of Miley Cyrus. He says the man, 53 year old Mark McLeod was arrested by Tybee Island Police on June 22 and booked on two charges of disorderly conduc and obstruction. St Lawrence says the man was released the day after his arrest. "If we had heard something about this guy and some of the stuff he had been saying or he had been charged with a felony he wouldn't have been released," St Lawrence tells us.
WEB EXTRA
Incident Report from Tybee Police
NOTE: Report contains mature language.
St Lawrence was reacting to a story in Wednesday's Savannah Morning News, which indicates that McLeod often shows up at events involving Cyrus, including a book signing in March in New York and that police in Los Angeles, California were interested in finding out more about his arrest on Tybee. Los Angeles police would only tell us they they “became aware that McLeod was arrested on June 22." A spokesperson from LAPD says a detective "then requested the police report from Tybee Island so he could have the information and be prepared in case McLeod tried to contact Cyrus in our jurisdiction." A spokesman from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office says they have no arrest records on file for McLeod.
A police report from Tybee Island Police says on June 22 McLeod was arrested as he stood with a crowd watching the filming of Cyrus's movie "The Last Song." They say McLeod was making "inappropriate comments" to some of the young females present and that when approached, McLeod became beligerant, started screaming and fought officers who tried to arrest him.
The report also goes on to outline comments Tybee Island police say McLeod made to them saying he was "great friends with Cyrus and she had asked him to come and see her."
The report indicates that McLeod said he had "been camping at Tybee for three or four days and that he had observed Cyrus on her balcony, that he sent her special presents and that he was going to marry Cyrus and even invited the police officer to the wedding."
St Lawrence says no one at his office was given the incident report from Tybee Police which he says is standard procedure and that most municipalities don't provide those reports to the jail and if they do it is often "days after the arrest."
Sheriff St Lawrence says "if this man really is a stalker, yes this would be a concern, but again we were told nothing about any of the comments that McLeod made to Tybee Island arresting officers. And even if we had been told, it wouldn't have mattered because he was charged with two non-violent misdemeanors and we acted accordingly."
Tybee Island Police would not comment to us about any of this. St Lawrence did tell us that if "the arresting officer feels someone is unbalanced or in need of mental health attention, that officer can take them to Memorial Health for an evaluation or set things in motion to have them evaluated at Georgia Regional. "We had no indication of any problems on the morning he was released," St Lawrence told us.
Tybee Island's police report does indicate that when McLeod was arrested he stated to booking personnel that he was "Miley Cyrus's boyfriend and they should contact her before we waste all this time."
St Lawrence does acknowlege that jail overcrowding was one factor in McLeod's release on the morning of June 23. "We have to look at who is charged with violent offenses and every day, figure out who we can let out. We aren't doing anything different than any other county in Georgia, we're all having to make these kinds of decisions."
St Lawrence told us that while overcrowding played some role that "if this guy had had $148 dollars he could have bonded out that day regardless of how many people had been housed in the jail that morning."
McLeod was released on what St Lawrence called a subpoena signature with the promise to appear in court on September first. His whereabouts are now unknown.
Video of Mark McLeod at a Miley Cyrus Book Signing in New York:
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