You can have the best stolen loot hiding skills in the world, but when it’s your cleverness vs. a tornado, I’m betting on the tornado every time.
“My house was torn up pretty badly, so I was checking things up,” Ed Cleek told ABC News. “Then someone called me and said: ‘Hey, I think that’s your air compressor. You want to take a look?’”
Cleek walked outside, and immediately spotted his bright red air compressor lying in his neighbor’s yard.
“I called the police right away,” Cleek said.
Officer Thomas Patton of Kingsport Police Department soon arrived at the scene.
“We also discovered a Lincoln welder which belonged to Mr. Cleek as well. There were a ratchet, an air hose and a weed trimmer that were stolen from other neighbors,” Patton told ABC News.
Cleek said it was no accident that his air compressor was in Christian’s yard after missing for a while.
“My air compressor was locked up in a barn… I kind of had suspicions, but you can’t just accuse people without proof,” Cleek said.
Christian is Jerrod L. Christian, who at the time of the storm and the undoing of his alleged theft operation was living in the safe confines of the Sullivan County Jail in Blountville, Tennessee, on charges of disorderly conduct and retaliation for past action stemming from an incident that saw him take his girlfriend’s van without permission, become aggressive and swear at police, get arrested for disorderly conduct and then threaten to beat up an officer and sexually assault his children while on his way to jail. That last bit is where the retaliation charge comes from, in case you were wondering.
He’s since been hit with two counts of burglary and two counts of theft. At last report he was still in jail and hadn’t yet entered a plea.