A Pitt County theft and a Beaufort County attempt to sell stolen goods landed a man in jail, according to a press release from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office press release.

The release said that on May 3, a report that someone was trying to sell metal tractor weights to Kemps Recycling on U.S. Highway 17 South was called in. Tractor weights are the huge blocks of cast iron used to offset the weight of attachments added to the body of the tractor.

“We were notified about the metal being sold,” said Maj. Kenneth Watson, spokesman for the sheriff’s office. “We had not had any reports locally so we reached to other agencies to see if they had had any reports of similar material.”

Investigator Jim Adams, working with Pitt County detectives, found that the metal tractor weights had been stolen from a farm in Pitt County, though the alleged thief was trying to sell them in Beaufort County.

“Thieves will travel great distances to sell stolen items as opposed to stealing and selling in the same community,” Watson said. “Because there are so many places that buy them, it’s sometimes difficult to contact them all to find out which one they may have sold it at.”

Adams obtained a warrant charging Brandon Taylor Yost, 24, of County Home Road, Ayden, with one count each of obtaining property by false pretenses and possession of stolen property. When Yost was arrested May 6 by Pitt County Sheriff’s Office deputies, they leveled their own charge against him: felony larceny.

Yost was held in the Pitt County Detention Center, with a $10,000 secured bond added for the Beaufort County charges.