The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Dry Fork man seen on video stealing gas tank


A Dry Fork man was arrested after a video of someone stealing a propane tank circulated on Facebook.

Brett McCown, 48, was arrested February 11 after Chad Yonts of Circle Drive in Whitesburg, whose tank was stolen, obtained a warrant based on the security camera footage. Several people who viewed the video identified the man pictured as McCown.

In the video, the man walks onto the porch of Yonts’s trailer, opens the storm door and appears to knock on the door. While he is waiting, he pushes a 100-pound propane tank around as though testing its weight, and then walks off the porch and looks in a window. The man comes back up the steps and opens the storm door and the entry door and sticks his head inside the trailer before picking up the tank off of a wheeled dolly and carrying it away, dropping it and nearly falling in the process.

Letcher County Sheriff Mickey Stines said he arrested McCown at his apartment at Dry Fork, and McCown told him where he had sold the tank. The tank was recovered in Knott County. The man who bought it was not charged.

McCown is charged with second-degree burglary and theft by unlawful taking under $500.

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