Porn and liquor seized during school warehouse burglary investigation

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – A former student of the Sullivan County school system is accused of breaking into an off-the-beaten path Department of Education warehouse and stealing, among other things, several bottles of liquor and $160 worth of pornographic DVDs.
Larry James Fleenor Jr, 24, of Hamilton Road in Blountville, was arrested on charges of burglary, theft over $500 and vandalism over $500, the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office said in a written statement on the arrest.
Meanwhile, the Department of Education is working on an internal investigation as to if – and if so, why – whiskey and porn were in the warehouse in the first place.
According to an incident report filed with the sheriff’s office, an employee at the Holston Drive facility called police at 5:45 a.m. when he arrived at work and discovered the building had been ransacked. Deputies said the burglar entered the building by jimmying a window, then broke out several more windows as he made his way through the retired school building.
“He tore the place up pretty good,” said Larry Hall, the education department’s supervisor of human resources. “He basically just threw stuff around. It was in quite a state of disarray.”
Hall said about 25 employees – from delivery van drivers to mail room clerks to special education teachers – have offices in the warehouse. He said the facility “does not involve the presence of students.”
The sheriff’s office incident report goes on to describe a VHS tape from the building’s security system that showed a man, with his face covered up to his eyes, enter the warehouse at 12:40 a.m. The man stayed until 2 a.m., went upstairs to the second floor for 90 seconds, then came back downstairs and left with “several items in his hands and a laptop in a case over his shoulder.”
The sheriff’s department said Fleenor told deputies that he’d gone to the building to look for money, and picked up several other items in the process.
According to the incident report, those items included: a Dell laptop, two cameras, $40 in quarters, two $5 bills, eight pornographic DVDs, two Jack Daniels gift sets – one empty, one full – another bottle of Jack Daniels and an empty bottle of Chivas Regal scotch.
The sheriff’s office said all of the stolen property has been recovered.
But Hall is skeptical of whether the more licentious of the stolen goods originated at the warehouse.
First, he said, Fleenor is a suspect in several other burglaries, a claim that Sheriff’s Capt. Keith Elton confirmed, but was unable to provide details. Hall theorized that the pornography and liquor could have come from another heist, and the thief said he got them all in one place to cover his tracks.
His suspicions arose, Hall said, when the two cameras Fleenor attributed to the warehouse turned out to belong to no one in the building.
“He’s an admitted burglar and thief,” Hall said. “We need to consider the source of the information before we jump to any conclusions. We’re going to get to the bottom of this story.”
From the outside, the building resembles an old, abandoned brick school building in the middle of nowhere, tucked between the Tri-Cities Regional Airport and miles of vast farmland. It is accessible only from a back alley.
Hill said he didn’t know why the building would have been targeted.
But, he said, a curious employee checked the logs and discovered that Fleenor came to the building in 2007 to get a copy of his transcript, concluding he was, at some point, a student in the Sullivan County School System, although he was unsure of the specific school.
Hill declined to comment on whether any school records had been stolen, and said that information will be made available only in the report he is preparing to submit to the director of schools, the chairman of the school board and the board’s attorney. He said he plans to complete the investigation by Thursday, but would leave when and if the report is made public up to its recipients.
Director of Schools Jack Barnes did not return a Tuesday afternoon call.
Fleenor is being held at the Sullivan County Jail on a $5,000 bond.
| (276) 645-2531