A 39-year-old Nashville woman with seven prior felony convictions for organized retail theft is back in custody after Mt. Juliet police say a routine traffic stop Saturday night turned up about $275 in Academy Sports merchandise and more than $1,000 worth of additional clothing police described as suspected stolen from Nashville-area retailers. Officers say she had just walked out of the same Academy Sports + Outdoors store where she had previously been arrested for theft.
According to WSMV, the Mt. Juliet Police Department stopped the woman a short time after she left the Academy Sports store for multiple traffic violations. Officers said her behavior during the stop raised further suspicions of criminal activity, leading them to search her belongings and vehicle.
Inside her purse, officers recovered about $275 worth of stolen Academy Sports merchandise, the station reports. A search of her vehicle then turned up more than $1,000 worth of additional suspected stolen clothing, which police believe came from other retailers in the Nashville area. She now faces charges of shoplifting and possession of burglary tools connected to the Academy Sports theft.
A Familiar Face at a Familiar Store
The Academy Sports involved sits at 549 Pleasant Grove Road in Mt. Juliet. It's a location that has become something of a hot spot for Mt. Juliet police, who say this wasn't the woman's first run-in with officers at that same store.
Police say officers are now working to identify the specific Nashville-area businesses tied to the unaccounted-for clothing and to facilitate returning the merchandise to its rightful owners, per the same WSMV report. Which stores lost that additional $1,000-plus in goods, and whether the woman will face further felony charges once those retailers are identified, remains unresolved.
How Tennessee Law Treats the Dollar Threshold
The dollar figure matters under Tennessee law. Retail theft of merchandise valued at $1,000 or less is a Class A misdemeanor, while theft valued at more than $1,000 but less than $2,500 is a Class E felony; higher values are assigned higher classifications, according to The Baker Law Firm. The reported charges are connected to the Academy Sports theft; police described the more than $1,000 in additional vehicle clothing as suspected stolen from other retailers.
The Tennessee theft statute addresses theft offenses; legal guidance also discusses aggregating the value of merchandise from multiple thefts within a 72-hour period to meet felony thresholds. The possession of burglary tools charge the woman now faces is its own separate offense under state law, covering devices meant to deactivate or evade retail security systems, as discussed by the Brooks Law Firm.
The Brooks Law Firm says store loss-prevention reports routinely list retail prices rather than actual value.
Part of a Pattern Along the Pleasant Grove Corridor
This isn't the first time a Mt. Juliet traffic stop near that stretch of retail has unraveled a larger theft case. In July, police stopped a vehicle after a stop-sign violation and arrested a woman for organized retail theft; the investigation involved activity at Academy Sports and roughly 50 fraudulent return receipts from stores across Middle Tennessee, according to Main Street Media of Tennessee. Then in September, officers watching the same store arrested two Nashville men after spotting them walk in with large empty bags, recovering concealed merchandise and illegal drugs and tying one of the men to five unsolved Home Depot thefts in Nashville, per the Mt. Juliet Police Newsroom.
Mt. Juliet's enforcement posture leans heavily on its MJGuardianShield automated license plate reader system alongside targeted patrols of retail areas, tools the department has credited with turning routine stops into major recoveries.
Saturday's arrest also echoes an October 2024 case Hoodline covered, in which Mt. Juliet police intercepted a Nashville resident during an I-40 traffic stop tied to a $5.9K warrant and recovered $5,899 in stolen merchandise from a nearby Kohl's along with an active multi-state extradition warrant.
