Keri Leigh Blair booking photo by Collierville Police Department.
A Tennessee school board member once backed by the far-right organization Moms for Liberty has resigned in the wake of charges that she stole merchandise by “skip-scanning” items at Target on seven occasions around the holidays last year.
Skip scanning involves pretending to pay for items at self-checkout when in reality, the merchandise is being stolen.
Keri Leigh Blair was arrested on Jan. 5 by officers of the Collierville Police Department and she was briefly detained the Shelby County Jail. She bonded out for $7,500.
In a statement on Facebook reviewed by Law&Crime, Collierville Schools acknowledged her resignation was for “personal, family reasons” and noted that she was serving her first term and had been elected in November 2022.
Police said Blair started “skip scanning at the self-check out” aisle of a Collierville Target just two days after Thanksgiving. She did it again on Nov. 30, the Los Angeles Blade reported.
Less than a week later she was back at it, according to Tennessee NBC affiliate WMC, “skip-scanning” merchandise on Dec. 3, 6, 13, 18 and 20.
Police said she used the same credit card and arrived at the Target in the same car each time.
Blair allegedly stole $728.61 worth of goods with items reportedly ranging in price from roughly $60 to $140.
The chairman of the Collierville school board, Wright Cox, expressed “his thanks to Ms. Blair’s service to the community” in the statement acknowledging her resignation.
The Blade reported that police started looking into Blair on Dec. 27.
A local outlet known as the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported on Blair’s rise to the board in 2022. Though she financed her own campaign in part, the outlet reported that she also accepted donations from the treasurer of Moms for Liberty in Shelby, Patricia Woodward, for her school board run.
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