Police have found one suspect and are looking for a second man in connection with a series of vehicle thefts last week.
Rockport Police Chief Mark Kelley said Monday that police have spoken to one of the young men who are suspected of the vehicle thefts. That person has not yet been charged.
The chief said that because four police agencies are involved in the case, officers want to be able to put all the information together before going to the district attorney for warrants.
Kelley credited the quick thinking of a Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office deputy in making progress toward identifying the suspects.
That officer stopped a pickup truck in Somerville early Friday morning and gave a ticket to the driver for operating without a license. That vehicle had not yet been reported stolen by its owner so the officer did not know it had been stolen, Kelley said. But because he suspected something was not right, he took photographs of the two men who had been in the truck.
A short time later, the owner of a vehicle in the neighboring town of Jefferson reported it stolen. A Rockport officer spotted it later Friday morning on Route 17 but the vehicle sped away before he could stop it. That vehicle was soon found on its side off the road on South Street.
The department then received a call of a pickup truck stolen in Rockport. The owner reportedly had witnessed a young man walking through the backyard and getting in his truck and stealing it.
The homeowner identified the suspect as one of the two people photographed by the Lincoln County officer.
Kelley said that truck has yet to be recovered.
Friday’s series of thefts began shortly after 2 a.m. when a pickup truck belonging to the Trade Winds Motor Inn was taken from the inn’s parking lot. The truck was the same one stolen from the inn’s parking lot Monday morning and recovered later that day in Rockport at Seasons Downeast Designs landscaping. The keys had been left in the truck both times.
One of the landscaping company’s pickups was discovered stolen Monday morning and recovered the following evening on Gay Street in Rockland.
Shortly after it was reported stolen again Friday, the Trade Winds truck was found in Union. Near that location, however, yet another truck was stolen early Friday morning. But that truck was not reported stolen until after it had been left in Somerville.
The truck that remains missing is a blue 2006 Ford F-250 pickup truck with license plate number 6070SD.
