Who called the movers?
That could have been the question posed by both a property owner and his tenant Friday afternoon after police said a pair of unknown – and unauthorized – movers helped themselves to items at the property owner’s rental home.
Carter County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Sarah McWhirter responded to Roan Mountain Friday in response to a report that a theft happened at a residence on First Hollow Road.
According to the incident report, the tenant living at the home told McWhirter he had an agreement with the homeowner that he could store some of his property in the home’s garage until he was able to move all the items to his new home.
On Thursday afternoon, between 1 and 1:30 p.m., the tenant arrived home to check the mail and found two men with a mid-sized U-Haul truck in the driveway, moving his belongings.
“One of the men told (the tenant) ‘I’m the one who texted you’,” McWhirter wrote in the report. The tenant said he thought the owner of the home had hired the two men to move his belongings, and so he left, thinking nothing else about the movers.
Later the same day, the owner of the home stopped by the house.
There, according to McWhirter, he encountered the “moving men” who told the owner they had been contacted online and were told to clean the house.
“The men asked (the owner) if he wanted a treadmill, and if not, they had to load it,” McWhirter wrote. “(The owner), thinking (the tenant) had contacted these men to move his belongings, helped the men load the belongings into the U-Haul truck.”
Later, on Thursday night, the tenant called the property owner asking questions about the movers. That’s when they both discovered “something was wrong.”
The property owner told McWhirter the men had identified themselves to his wife as Tim and Brian. She had described “Tim” as being around 30 years old, 160 pounds, 5’5” with black hair and several tattoos; “Brian” was in his 20s, 6’2”, 200 pounds with sandy-colored hair, she said.
Both the owner of the property and the tenant reported items missing.
The homeowner’s reported missing items included a grill from a furnace, two gallons of stain, a paintbrush, a work light and a roll of painter’s tape.
The tenant reported missing a treadmill, a bed with frame and box springs, a chest of drawers, computer desk, cycling equipment, stain and paint, tools, a grill, scrap metal, a 40-foot ladder, coffee table, a 4-foot palm tree, dishes, decorative pictures, personal tax paperwork, a 6-foot ladder, a green Weedeater push mower, a red Troy-Bilt weedeater and a microwave.