A thief who sold stolen tools to a man and then stole them back from him will serve four months in jail.
The burglar, Zeke Lee Wesson, has been ordered to serve 120 days of a five-year sentence for theft and burglary and is on the hook to make $5,525 restitution. His partner in crime, Trevor Andrew Duncan, is in Florida awaiting prosecution for his part of the case.
They were arrested last year in connection with a rash of burglaries around the county.
“They were stealing us blind,” said McMinnville police detective Todd Rowland. “These tools ended up at a lot of pawn shops. Right now we’re trying to put them back with their rightful owners.”
The tools in question range from compressors and nail guns to regular hand tools. Police believe the men amassed the stolen tools by a series of burglaries, one of which happened on West Main Street. Specifically, police believe the men sold tools to a local contractor and then stole them back.
“Mr. Wesson said he and Trevor Duncan sold (the contractor) some tools,” McMinnville police officer Brad Hall said of Wesson’s confession. “They went back to the basement (where the tools had been stored by the contractor), cut the locks off the doors with bolt cutters and stole the tools.”
After stealing the tools, the men set about selling them off, doubling their profits. Rowland, along with detectives Marty Cantrell and Stuart Whitman, tracked the trail of the tools to Cookeville where many had been pawned at pawn shops there. They also found the thieves had sold some of the tools to some construction workers they encountered on the side of the road near Sparta.
“The contractor in that case returned the tools,” said Rowland, noting the man did the right thing when he was told the tools he had bought were stolen.