Police: Pa. thieves pretended to be in search of yard sales
FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP, Pa. - Two people were arrested for an alleged string of thefts in Butler County, Pennsylvania, while pretending to look for yard sales, according to CBS Pittsburgh.
Police say William Harris and Brandy Williams were actually stealing from neighborhood residents.
"I was eating supper on the back porch and saw them walking down the road carrying a (Little Tikes) basketball hoop and didn't know who they were," a resident named Fowler told the station. "I never gave it any more thought when she came back to the porch and said, 'Are you having a garage sale?' And I said no, and she said, 'Okay,' and basically left," the man said.
Fowler was one of three alleged victims of the couple. According to the station, the Little Tikes basketball hoop was stolen from a home down the road.
"She was carrying the pole and had wheels on it, wheeling it down the road, carrying the backboard and some other things in his arms," Fowler said.
He said he was a little luckier.
"They took stuff out of my garage, but didn't steal it. It was not where it should have been, it was up by my house, so I don't know if they were staging or what," he told CBS Pittsburgh.
Police tracked down the pair Tuesday hiding in a corn field. They say they found two pill bottles on Williams. One was improperly packaged and did not belong to her. This was not the pair's first theft the station reported.
"Subsequent to that, there is more information on these two individuals traveling around, checking car doors and seeing which ones were unlocked," Trooper Dan Kesten, with the Pennsylvania State Police Butler Barracks, told the station.
Williams and Harris were arraigned on multiple charges and released on unsecured bond.
CBS Pittsburgh knocked on the couple's door but no one answered.
Their preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 11.