LITTLE ROCK — A Little Rock truck driver arrested Tuesday after police accused him of ramming a pickup with his tractor-trailer cab wound up arrested again Thursday, this time accused of stealing a load of meat he was supposed to deliver to Miami two weeks ago, police said.
Robert Lee, 39, was arrested Thursday after an officer spotted him and another man on Chicot Road unloading a trailer containing 549 boxes of hot dogs and 384 hams worth an estimated $42,000, Little Rock police said.
Lee was charged with theft by receiving and taken to the Pulaski County jail, where he was being held Thursday night.
Lee had been contracted to pick up the hams and hot dogs in South Carolina on Nov. 13 and drop off the load in Miami two days later, Little Rock police spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said by phone Thursday.
Police believe Lee was selling the hams from the refrigerated trailer, Davis said.
About 10:30 a.m. Thursday, a patrol officer spotted two men, one later identified as Lee, taking cases of hams off the back of a 53-foot trailer parked in a lot at 10015 Chicot Road and placing the meat into a sport utility vehicle, according to a police report.
Lee told an officer that the trailer’s cold unit was breaking down and that he and his brother were moving the hams into cold storage, the report said.
The officer found paperwork inside and called the meat owner, Smithfield Hams, whose officials told police the items had been missing for two weeks and were believed stolen, the police report said.
Health officials Thursday advised anyone who bought the pork products from the trailer to destroy them, because inspectors could not ensure the meat was handled properly, said Ann Russell, Arkansas Department of Health’s director of communications.
Health Department specialists will follow the remaining load out to a dumping yard and pour bleach or Pine-Sol on the meat to ensure no one will eat it, said Teresa Bullock, the department’s food protection section chief.
“We want to make sure it doesn’t make it back into the consumer string,” Bullock said.
Police arrested Lee at his home Tuesday night after he reported a group of people had assaulted him and that his tractor-trailer was missing, a police report stated.
He began acting erratically, threatening to kill whoever took the tractor-trailer and told officers “he was ready to fight,” the report said.
He attempted to flee after police handcuffed him, causing two officers to use pepper spray on him, police said.
Lee was a suspect in an aggravated assault earlier Tuesday that left a pickup jammed into a building, Davis said.
A tractor-trailer cab that police think Lee was driving rammed into the back of a 1989 Chevrolet pickup and shoved the truck into a building at 1306 Wright Ave., police said. The pickup driver got out of the vehicle just as the collision happened and wasn’t seriously injured, a police report said.
Lee and the pickup driver had gotten into a heated argument Tuesday morning about a woman, Davis said.
Lee was charged Tuesday with public intoxication, disorderly conduct, refusal to submit to arrest and attempt to influence a public servant. He was released Wednesday after he posted bond.
Officials at MHC Truck Leasing, which owns the cab, declined to comment for this article.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 11/30/2012