Florida Highway Patrol troopers say they were called to a report of a theft on westbound I-4 on Monday. They were told a driver had loaded a downed power pole onto a small sedan near I-75, according to Public Affairs Officer Sgt. Steve Gaskins.
Gaskins says the driver then drove, with the pole loaded on the roof of his car, to a recycling facility on Harney Road. When he got there, troopers say he was turned away because he didn’t have proper documentation for the equipment.
The driver of the heist is 71-year-old Douglas Allen Hatley. He was driving a 1997 Toyota. (Oh, what a feeling)
Online jail records from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office show this is not Hatley’s first brush with the law. He was charged with grand theft, dealing in stolen property and false information on a secondary metals recycler form in 2017.
