Dighton residents, which proudly proclaim they live in a “Right to Farm Community,” were shocked to be center of national attention as the feds moved in and arrested 21-year-old resident Jack Teixeira.
“Today, the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information. Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
But to David Corderio, the owner since November of the neighborhood convenience store Fast Mart, Teixeira was just another customer who stopped in from time to time and just has “one of those faces.”
“I think I’ve seen the guy, but I can’t say I know him,” Cordeiro said. “He usually comes in wearing camo.”
Cordeiro enlisted the help of some of the other customers during the Herald’s visit to see if anyone had any information. One man, disappointed that the store didn’t have his regular smokes in stock Thursday, hadn’t even heard the news of the bust. Another had heard something, but none of them had ever heard of Jack Teixeira.
Fast Mart is right in the middle of a small strip mall that seems to be the heart of the quiet community, between the only Dunkin’ in town and a pizza place that serves fish fry on Thursdays and Fridays, according to a sign on the door.
The pizza shop has a cashier who is Teixeira’s age, but she wasn’t in that day, according to the shop’s owner.
At Dunkin’, the two cashiers working were both too young to have attended school with Texeira. But the media attention got two men drinking coffee together smiling.
“Nothing like this ever happens around here,” Jerry, who declined to give his last name, said.
Bob, who also declined to provide a last name, agreed. It was so quiet around town, even though the population “nearly doubled” since he moved there in the late 1970s, that he didn’t even like the description of “bedroom community.”
“Bedroom for where?” he asked rhetorically about the Bristol County town southwest of Taunton and sandwiched between Rehoboth and Berkley. But then he conceded he liked it that way. “It’s a great community. It’s everything you think a small town should be.”
When the Herald stepped into the town library to question the librarian, it was the fifth request for a high school yearbook she had received. But the first in-person request. No luck.
Across the parking lot to Town Hall and the luck was also short. The clerk wouldn’t provide assessor records for 1814 Maple St., where Teixeira lived, but did hand over a public records request form. He also just smiled and said “No” when asked if he knew what a 21-year-old might do around here.
Dighton Police cruisers barred Maple Street from Sesame Street — where it was called “Maple Swamp Road” — and Wheeler Street. It was 0.4 miles from 1814 in either direction, and those who lived at the blockades didn’t have much to say, though one household seemed to invite a few friends over to watch the media watch the blockade.
A woman sneaking a smoke among the media scrum confirmed she was a resident and not a reporter, but she, too, had no idea who Teixeira was.