Three men arrested in Pine Manor on Thursday morning are accused of stealing a generator worth over $2,000 from a Lee County business.
According to an arrest report from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Christopher McCormick, 30, Christopher Thompson, 41, and Richard Waltman, 51, were arrested after a man reported that a $2,200 Predator Inverter 9500 generator has been stolen from his business on Cypress Lake Drive in Villas. There was an Apple AirTag tracking device attached to the generator, as the man said his previous generator has been stolen.
At around 10:15 a.m., deputies tracked the Apple AirTag’s location to a duplex on Fifth Avenue in Pine Manor, after it had moved from location to location for several hours. A special operations unit entered the home, detained McCormick, Thompson and Waltman and a fourth person who was not afterward arrested, then began a search. The generator was found inside with the wheels missing.
McCormick and Thompson face charges of grand theft (between $750 and $5,000) and dealing in stolen property. Waltman faces a charge of dealing in stolen property.