Sheriff's Journal: The suspicious looking shed

The shed was not a typical backyard storage shed; it wasn’t decorated to match the house and look like a little cabin with windows on each side of the door to let light in for gardening. It was more of a leaning oblong structure with tin metal siding that was slightly different colors depending on what side of the shed you looked at. It had one old wood framed window and the roof was sagging with random parts of tin overlapping each other to cover places that were starting to leak. It would not be uncommon to see structures like this out on old farm properties, the remnants of what is left of a farmhouse that has been gone for years. But this shed stood out when we drove by. It was covered in the normal signs we look for in drug houses. It was behind a decent looking little house, but the shed had multiple cameras mounted around it, facing the door, the driveway, and the back of the house. It had “no trespassing” signs posted on the front door of the shed, and again on a post about 20 feet in front of the shed. The windows were covered in news papers and tin foil. The house had none of this.

Most of the time we start a drug investigation based on information we get from detectives, road patrol during calls and traffic stops, and from the tips we receive from the public. This one however, only required us to drive by and see it. We decided on this one to keep it simple and just go knock on the door to the house. The owner of the house told us he did not go out to the shed. When we asked him if anyone was in the shed, he gave the standard answer of “not that I’m aware of.” He then gave us permission to go knock on the door to make sure no one was in his shed. He did not have a good answer as to what the cameras were for, stating that a friend put them up for him. When we knocked on the shed door, a man tried to run out the back, but fell in the mud (it was raining) and did not make it into the nearby wooded area he was heading for. It turned out that he had a warrant, drugs in his pocket, and stolen property in the shed. What perplexed us was that he asked how we found him so quickly. We did not have the heart to tell him we didn’t even know who he was, we just saw his strange shed.

It is not always this simple to find wanted people and drugs, but we do appreciate it when they help us out by making it obvious that something strange is going on. A big portion of our drug investigations start with a tip we receive from the public through our website or our mobile app. It takes everyone working together to make a difference in our community. If you see something that looks suspicious, give us a call or send us a message. Our new mobile app can be downloaded for apple and android by searching “Vernon County Missouri Sheriff” and makes it very easy to send an anonymous message to us in seconds. You can also e-mail us at tips@VernonCoSheriff.org or you can call (417) 667-6042.