Burlington woman charged in thefts, cocaine case spanning Guilford County

A Burlington woman accused in thefts stretching across Guilford and Alamance counties was arrested inside the TJ Maxx at 1453 University Dr., and police said a search of her vehicle turned up cocaine and stolen retail items.

Burlington police identified the woman as Shanna Monica Gandy, 43. Detectives said the case grew out of larceny investigations that began in August 2025 at city businesses, where officers pieced together a pattern of retail thefts before linking Gandy to the crimes. Police also said she had outstanding warrants in multiple jurisdictions when the Burlington Police Department’s Aerial Reconnaissance & Tactical Intelligence Center, or ARCTIC, found her near University Drive and moved in at the store.

After the arrest, a K-9 unit searched her vehicle and allegedly found cocaine along with stolen merchandise. Gandy faces a broad set of charges that includes misdemeanor and felony larceny, identity theft, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of stolen property and several failure-to-appear warrants. She was being held at the Alamance County Detention Center without bond.

The Guilford County tie matters because investigators say the thefts crossed county lines, bringing the case under North Carolina law that allows retail-theft offenses involving property taken in more than one county to be aggregated into a single charge, with venue in each county where part of the offense occurred. State law also treats organized retail theft as a felony when the value of retail property aggregated over a 90-day period reaches the threshold set by law, which makes long-running theft patterns far more serious than a single shoplifting call.

The case lands in a broader retail-crime picture that local stores know well. The North Carolina Department of Justice said businesses in the state lost more than $1.8 billion in revenue to theft in 2022, and Attorney General Jeff Jackson has said organized retail crime hurts businesses, puts employees and customers at risk and pushes costs higher for everyone. The FBI defines organized retail theft as large-scale theft of retail merchandise carried out for resale and financial gain, a description that fits the kind of multi-store, multi-county pattern Burlington police say they tracked here.

Burlington’s police department has leaned more heavily on specialty units in recent years, including ARCTIC, as chief Alan Balog said in April 2025 that the department had 146 of 152 sworn positions filled and more than 85% of deployable officers for more than six months. The department also says it was named the 2024 North Carolina Law Enforcement Agency of the Year, a backdrop that helps explain how officers were able to keep a months-long theft case moving until it ended in a store on University Drive.