(Stillwater, Okla.) — A man who reportedly tried to sell Perkins Police Chief Bob Ernst a weed eater and edger contained in the bed of a stolen pickup truck is scheduled to be arraigned Friday from the Payne County Jail where he is being held on $5,000 bail.
If convicted of possessing a silver 2000 Chevrolet 1500 pickup truck on Sunday that had been stolen three days earlier from an Oklahoma City woman, Cody Raymond Palmer, 21, of Guthrie, could be given a five-year prison term and a $5,000 fine, according to the charge.
If convicted of an additional count of driving without a license at Highway 33 and N. Main Street in Perkins on Sunday, Palmer could be incarcerated for an additional one year in jail and fined an additional $500, court records show.
Perkins Police Officer George Hannon was contacted shortly before 2 p.m. on Sunday by the police chief who said he “was approached by a male subject who wanted to sell him a weed eater and edger,” according to Hannon’s affidavit.
“Chief Ernst advised me the subject was in a silver Chevrolet pickup in the shopping mall across from the Williams grocery store.
“As I approached Kinder-Wells on North Main Street, I was able to see the vehicle backing out of a parking place located at the laundromat,” the officer wrote in his affidavit.
As the driver pulled out of the lot and turned west onto Highway 33, the driver was not wearing his seatbelt, the affidavit alleged.
When the officer approached the pickup truck, “the driver kept his window up and asked me what was wrong,” Hannon wrote in his affidavit.
After the driver allegedly admitted he did not have a valid driver’s license, “Chief Ernst asked Cody if the vehicle belonged to him,” the affidavit said.
“As Chief Ernst was talking to Cody, dispatch radioed that the vehicle was stolen out of Oklahoma City,” the affidavit alleged.
After the driver was arrested, the officer found in the bed of the pickup a weed eater with a sticker from Kinnunen, which is an equipment rental agency in Stillwater, and an edger without a sticker or serial number, the affidavit said.
Both of the items were placed in the Perkins Police Department for safekeeping, the affidavit said.
When the Perkins officer contacted the Oklahoma City Police Department to see if the weed eater and edger were listed as stolen, “I was told the vehicle was the only property listed as stolen,” Hannon wrote in his affidavit.
A dispatcher at the Stillwater Police Department said that a stolen property report had not been filed on either the weed eater or edger, the affidavit said.
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