Cash stolen from handicapped Cary boy collecting funds for wheelchair basketball

Seated in his wheelchair, Nolan Turner, 12, staked out his neighborhood Thursday evening to sell water bottles and raise money to bring his wheelchair basketball team to his elementary school.

“Everybody at school has been asking me what it’s like to (play basketball) in a wheelchair, and I want to show them,” the Briarcliff Elementary fifth-grader said.

He had already collected more than $250 – kept in a bucket – of the $1,000 needed to bring the experience of playing wheelchair basketball to his schoolmates.

But as he began to work the neighborhood near High Meadow Drive about 6:30 p.m., a man he didn’t recognize grabbed his money bucket and unhurriedly walked away, according to Cary Police Department Capt. Mike Williams. Nolan yelled and screamed at the man but was helpless to follow him.

Williams said the cash bucket was found near 119 Winners Circle later that evening. Only some coins were left. more