By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer
Seven of eight suspects in the theft of 10 large-screen televisions have been arrested by Laurel County sheriff’s deputies.
Eight employees of IFCO, a pallet company on U.S. 25 about four miles north of London, allegedly took the 50-inch Panasonic plasma television sets on Sept. 30 while transferring them from a truck trailer.
The 10 sets were valued at a total of about $9,000, stated a press release from the Laurel County Sheriff’s Department.
The sets were being placed on pallets to be loaded into another truck and taken to a Wal-Mart store in Midway, Tenn.
Sheriff’s Detective Tommy Johnston said in an interview Monday that the sets weren’t noted as missing until the shipment arrived at the store Oct. 6.
He said the IFCO manager in London was notified of the missing TVs two days later and reported it to the sheriff’s office.
Reportedly, one of the IFCO employees built a “wall of pallets” to block a surveillance camera monitoring the employees’ activities.
The televisions were then allegedly moved from the trailer they arrived in to vehicles owned by the employees.
Johnston said that once the missing televisions were reported, the manager noticed that pallets had been stacked in a way that wasn’t normal, apparently in order to block the view of the camera.
Seven of the eight suspects have been arrested and eight TVs have been recovered, said Johnston Monday morning.
Tony Johnson, 27, of London, was charged with three counts of theft over $500.
Charged each with a single count of theft of over $500 were Ricky Northern, 23, of Tyner; Jamie Senters, 23, and Billy Carr, 25, both of Manchester; and Joshua Swafford, 26, April Hicks, 21, and Aaron Smith, 21, all of London.
