Oreste Jose Garcia
A Florida man is being held in the Coffee County Jail under a $506,000 bond after he was arrested at the eastbound scales on I-24 in Manchester Friday morning. Oreste Jose Garcia, 51, of Miami, Fl was charged with felony theft of property, refusal for drug inspection and evading arrest. He is a federal parolee out of Florida. According to reports by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Trooper Corey Stuart he stopped the Freightliner tractor-trailer Garcia was driving around 2:40 a.m. Friday morning. The officer requested Garcia’s log book and planned to conduct an inspection of the vehicle after noticing what he considered several suspicious indicators of violations. As Garcia went to retrieve the logbook, he fled on foot into nearby woods. The trooper then requested help from other troopers as well as Manchester Police and Coffee County deputies. After the officer chased Garcia for a while they located him and Coffee County deputies arrested him at mile marker 117 on Interstate 24, about a mile past the scales. When officers checked the truck Garcia was driving he found 18 pallets of cell phones and that trailer was stolen in Jeffersonville, Ind. The estimated value of the cargo and the trailer is approximately $200,000.
