(Stillwater, Okla.) — Two 28-year-old men, who lived together in Stillwater and in Greenville, Ms., have been charged together with possessing a stolen utility trailer, which they allegedly attempted to pawn, in a case investigated by the Perkins Police Department.
Arrest warrants were issued last week for Richard Horton Jr. and Eugene Sanders Jr., who were not in custody today, court records show.
Horton had been placed on probation earlier this month for concealing stolen checks and possessing methamphetamine in Stillwater in September.
Sanders had been charged earlier this month with concealing a woman’s lost debit card and possessing drug paraphernalia in Stillwater in December.
In the Perkins case, Officer Michael Pearson was sent on Christmas Eve at 7:30 p.m. to 33 Pawn on the shop owner’s report that two men “were trying to sell the trailer for an amount considerably less than its value, and the men did not have any identification on them,” according to an affidavit.
After a pickup with a utility trailer pulled out of 33 Pawn onto Highway 33 without operable tail lights, the officer stopped the vehicle, Pearson wrote in an affidavit.
“I showed Sanders the inoperable lights and asked if he knew they did not work,” the officer wrote in his affidavit.
Asked if the trailer was his, Sanders said that he bought it from a friend, who told him to pawn it to get some money, the affidavit alleged.
Perkins Police Lt. Jason Galt told Sanders that his friend “has been previously investigated for theft, and that the trailer was probably stolen,” the affidavit alleged.
At the time of the stop, the vehicle identification number on the trailer’s frame did not return to be stolen, the affidavit said.
However, subsequently the trailer and suspect vehicle were impounded, the affidavit said.
The trailer had been sold at OK Truck and Trailer in Oklahoma City to a man who said it was not at the location it was supposed to be, the affidavit said.
When the officer again spoke to the owner of 33 Pawn, he said both men “worked as a team to try to convince him the deal was good,” on Christmas Eve, the affidavit said.
The pawn shop owner said the men wanted $600 for the trailer, for which they later said they would take $400, the affidavit alleged.
The owner said the trailer was worth “way more than that and felt it was stolen,” the affidavit said.
The owner said “the same men had tried to pawn tools and a generator the week prior without prior identification,” the affidavit said.
He said he saw one of the men with a gun which frightened him so much that “he removed his shotgun from behind the counter for safety,” and told the men to leave, the affidavit alleged.
Three weeks ago, Horton pleaded guilty to possessing two checks stolen from a Stillwater woman, as well as possessing methamphetamine in September, for which he was placed on five years’ probation except 30 days in jail already served, with an order to pay $185 in restitution along with $800 in fines and assessments, to undergo a substance abuse evaluation and random drug tests as well as perform 75 hours of community service, court records show.
Sanders had been charged three weeks ago with concealing an Edmond woman’s lost debit card and possessing drug paraphernalia in Stillwater in December, court records show.
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