People v. Rivers CA4/2

BACKGROUND

In December 2022 police officers noticed a Ford F-250, which they believed to be

a commercial truck, with a damaged door lock. The officers also noticed the license plate

had three letters—as a passenger vehicle would have—rather than one letter, as a

commercial vehicle would. The officers ran the plate and learned it was for a different

vehicle. Based on this, they obtained a search warrant for the truck and placed a GPS

tracker on it.

When the truck moved two days later, an officer located it and pulled it over.

Rivers was driving, and another man was in the passenger seat. Rivers told the officer he

purchased the vehicle a week or two before. However, he could not produce the truck’s

registration or any documentation of the sale. The officer checked the vehicle

identification number and confirmed the truck had been reported stolen. The officer then

arrested both Rivers and his passenger.

The officer contacted the owner of the truck and returned it to him. The owner

later testified that when the vehicle was stolen his son had the keys. He also said there

2 was no damage to the driver’s side door lock before the truck was stolen, but there was

damage…