A Commerce man faces theft by receiving stolen property charges in Commerce and possibly additional charges out of Elbert County after he sold a stolen wood splitter to a Commerce businessman.
He is Ronson Westmoreland, 57, of 904 Old Harden Orchard Road, Commerce.
According to the Commerce Police Department, its involvement began when an officer got a call from the Arcade Police Department saying that a wood splitter at Seagraves Welding & Machine Shop was probably stolen property.
The officer went by the shop, where the owner told him he’d written a $500 check to Westmoreland to buy the device. The officer asked him to hold onto the splitter while he checked to confirm if it was stolen.
The next day, the officer got a call from the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office whose investigator reported that the wood splitter was among a number of items taken in a burglary.
The Commerce officer called Westmoreland’s probation officer, to arrange a search of the residence, Westmoreland apparently having waived Fourth Amendment rights under a previous plea agreement.
Meanwhile, the victim came to Commerce and confirmed that the wood splitter was his, so the officer and a Jackson County deputy, along with the probation officer, went to the Old Harden Orchard Road address.
There, the report said, they found two males on the front porch. As police approached, the Commerce officer saw one of the men slide something under the rocking chair in which he was sitting. That turned out to be a plastic container with methamphetamine and Valium, which the officer turned over to Jackson County to pursue. The other man had a pistol. However, Westmoreland was not present at the time.
Police got permission from the suspect’s mother to search the house. The report did not indicate whether any stolen goods were found, but it did say that the officer went to another business, where the owner told him that Westmoreland had come by “with a whole car full of things, and he was trying to sell whatever he could,” the report said.
The report did not indicate when and under what circumstances Westmoreland was arrested.
