PHILLIPS, Maine — An Augusta man has been arrested and three more will face charges after a deputy stopped a pickup truck with a trailer overloaded with scrap metal on Route 4 Wednesday night.
Franklin County Deputy Matt Brann stopped the vehicle at about 10:30 p.m. after noticing a defect and the vehicle and trailer being extremely overloaded with scrap metal, Deputy Nate Reid said Friday.
Brann asked the driver and three passengers where the metal came from and was told it came from a man in Phillips, Reid said. There have been a lot of thefts of metal around the area, and police have been on alert to this, he said.
Brann was pretty sure the metal came from the abandoned USA Concrete Plant on Route 4 in Phillips, Reid said. He had the vehicle towed to Bryan’s Auto Body in New Vineyard and the driver and three passengers found a way home, Reid said.
Brann also took photos of the metal and filed a police report at the sheriff’s office. Deputies saw the report the next day and Reid, Sgt. Steve Lowell and Detective David St. Laurent went to the abandoned concrete plant. They determined the metal had come from there, Reid said.
Radiators were removed from trucks. The sluices that concrete was poured from were taken off trucks and batteries removed, he said. Other miscellaneous metal was taken from the yard, he said.
Brann and St. Laurent went to Bryan’s Auto to look at the material in the truck and trailer to confirm it came from the plant. When the owner of the truck came to get it Thursday afternoon he was interviewed.
Shawn Michaud, 32, of Augusta was arrested on charges of felony burglary and theft, Reid said.
Michaud was not the driver of the truck that night, he said. The other three people in the truck will also be charged, he said.
Michaud was still at the Franklin County jail on Friday morning. His bail was set at $250 cash, a corrections officer said.
Comparably speaking- most of us would invite these guys to Thanksgiving dinner over the Pharmacy robbers, game poachers, bank robbers, drug dealers, car thieves, wife beaters, child abusers, pedophiles, etc. On the whole crime scale these are perfect gentlemen!
Being “dishonest but slightly less sleazy” would not warrant a dinner invitation at my house.
On second thought, my wife and I might not have enough manpower around to protect the pots and pans from leaving after dinner.
Dont forget to count the silverware.
You comment brings to mind one of my all time favorite quotes:
.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’d like to tell you that ours would have to go to one of the Gold and Silver stores…..I’ve used most of the knives as screwdrivers …they wouldn’t get much …even at the scrap yard!
Or the plumbing when they went to use the bathroom…
Hope you are feeling well/better. That PPH comments went belly up eh?
Thanks. I have good days and bad, but am still constantly surrounded by loving family so even the bad days are not so bad after all.
Yeah – The PPH comments have turned into a joke. Too bad, because even though the discussions could get a bit raucous, they were usually informative as well.
I’m closer to Bangor anyway so it has worked out well, even though
I still have ties down that way. Facebook is trouble as far as I’m
concerned. Way too intrusive and why they forced that upon us is beyond me. 5 years from now FB will be just a bad memory.
Anything to do with facebook gets an instant ” delete”.
Not if you’ve had copper stolen twice like I have,,..