By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Tulsa man with a history of drug convictions has been jailed on $10,000 bail pending an April 20 court appearance on a Payne County charge of possessing a stolen truck in a Perkins parking lot.
At the time of his arrest in Perkins, Christopher John Brown, 45, was being sought in Rogers County on a charge of possessing a stolen vehicle there. Brown was already on probation for possessing a stolen vehicle in Creek County, court records show.
In his Payne County case, Brown was arrested by Perkins Police Officer Daryn Zanfardino at 1:25 a.m. on March 10 in the McDonald’s parking lot where he was discovered asleep with a woman and a dog in a Ford F-150 truck that had been stolen in Tulsa, an affidavit alleged.
“Brown stated that he had turned around because he was looking for the casino,” the affidavit said.
“I asked Brown if he had the registration for the vehicle due to the fact that the tag returned to a Chevy and the vehicle it was on was a Ford F-150. Brown stated that he threw the insurance verification for the vehicle away while he was cleaning the truck out,” the Perkins officer alleged in his affidavit.
“I then asked Brown if he would pop the door of the truck so I could read the VIN off of the sticker located beside the door,” the officer wrote in his affidavit.
A dispatcher advised the Perkins officer that the vehicle identification number returned back to a 1996 Ford vehicle stolen in Tulsa that had an expired tag, the affidavit alleged.
Brown said he had received the truck a week ago from a man named Michael, whom he paid $300 to use the truck, the affidavit alleged.
“I asked Brown where he was headed to in Stillwater and he stated that he had no destination,” the Perkins officer alleged in his affidavit.
“Brown stated that he had given Michael $300 over a two-week period and that they do drugs and he does drugs. I asked Brown whose tag was on the truck and he stated that he didn’t know,” the officer alleged in his affidavit.
Since the woman in the truck did not know it was stolen, she was released with the dog, the affidavit said.
According to court records, a bench warrant was issued for Brown’s arrest on March 12 for failing to appear in court on Wagoner County charges of breaking into a Walmart building in Wagoner, conspiring with two unknown men to load shopping carts full of merchandise in the Walmart Garden Center and returning later to steal those items, engaging in a pattern of committing theft from Walmart, and trespassing there, all in 2019.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections and court records show that Brown had previously been convicted of:
* possessing a stolen vehicle in Creek County in 2018 for which he was placed in 2019 on two years of probation;
* endeavoring to manufacture methamphetamine in Tulsa County in 2011 for which he was given a 12-year prison term, but served less than four years before his release in 2015;
* drug possession in Creek County in 2011 for which he was placed on 10 years of probation;
* second-degree burglary in Creek County in 2011 for which he was originally given five years of probation that was revoked in 2012 to a concurrent four and one-half years of prison;
* manufacturing a drug in Tulsa County in 2004 for which he was given a four-year prison term followed by three years of probation plus a $50,000 fine, but served about two and one-half years of incarceration.
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