3 men face felony charges in Morrow County theft

MORROW COUNTY – Morrow County District Attorney Justin Nelson says charges just kept on growing against three men who were arrested last month for allegedly stealing wire. The reason the charges grew is because of cooperating victims with a surveillance camera and the investigative efforts of the Boardman Police Department and the Morrow County Sheriff’s Office.

Larry Perrin, 48, is being held on $155,000 bail while Chester Paradiso, 53, and Will Erickson, 32, have bail set at $105,000 each at the Umatilla County Jail. They were taken into custody on Feb. 24 for the initial theft of wire from a company in Irrigon because the victim was alerted by an over-the-counter camera with a motion detector. By the time the owner got to the scene, the vehicle had gone but Nelson said the victim acted on a hunch after alerting law enforcement and spotted the vehicle at Love’s Truck Stop. It fled, but he had the license plate number and a description of the vehicle.

Boardman police pursued the vehicle and managed to stop it. Nelson said that the original charges against the trio were related to the theft of wire and electric motors at the business. Then, the victim sorted the wire and said some of it was not his.

Boardman officers Tamara Beardsley and Zach Stutzman worked with Deputy Colleen Neubert to determine that the alien wire was stolen from locomotive engines. The wire in question was very expensive and was used to run the electric motors for locomotives.

“They were just cut out quickly,” Nelson said. “This required most of the wire to be replaced and one of the locomotives had to be raised up to be repaired.”

That alleged theft raised the level of the crimes that were committed. “For wire that may have had a value of a little over $1,000, we’re looking at damage in excess of tens of thousands of dollars to these locomotives,” Nelson said.

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