Stolen antique truck recovered
by Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office
August 11, 2015
ROCK SPRINGS, WYOMING - Thanks to social media and an alert deputy, an antique truck stolen from a ranch near Eden last month has been recovered.
The truck, a green 1940 1 ½-ton Chevrolet flatbed with wooden cargo racks, was parked at the spot where it was stolen just off U.S. Highway 191 for many years and was last registered in the 1970s.
Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Lowell said a witness reported in July that it was loaded onto a flatbed trailer drawn by a late 1990s to early 2000s black Ford diesel pickup, an extended-cab four-wheel-drive with Wyoming license plates. The black Ford pickup, towing the flatbed and stolen Chevrolet, left the area northbound on Highway 191.
The Sheriff’s Office circulated photographs of the stolen truck on Facebook and in the mainstream media, encouraging anyone with information call in.
Shortly after the photographs were released, a Facebook poster reported that she had seen the truck, loaded on a trailer, northbound on Highway 191. Next, Deputy Sheriff Steve Dunning of the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office saw the Facebook post and realized he’d seen the truck on some property near Marbleton, southwest of Pinedale.
Working with Sublette County authorities, detectives of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant on the Marbleton property and recovered the truck, which by then had been extensively disassembled. They also interviewed the man in possession of the truck, whom officials are declining to identify for now.
Lowell said his agency’s findings have been submitted to the Sweetwater County Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges, as the investigation continues.
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