The attorney general of Mississippi dubbed the perpetrators of the staged car accident the Apple Dumpling Gang, a reference to the 1975 Disney movie about a gang of bunglers out to steal gold.
The last of the seven perpetrators was sentenced this week, to a suspended three-year sentence, for staging the car crash in Yazoo County, according to a press release from the attorney general, Jim Hood. Lorenzo Deering, age 24, must go to a restitution center to pay all court costs and fines.
Local press and others have had a field day with the case, and with the haplessness of Deering and his cohorts.
The scam was set up on a relatively quiet, Yazoo County road. Passing motorists saw the crash, with bodies strewn about the ground, and notified law enforcement.
But, almost as soon as law enforcement arrived on the scene, the jig was up.
“The caper unraveled when alert law enforcement officers noticed that one of the vehicles had been towed to the crime scene,” Hood said in a release. “They found the tow chain still attached to the vehicle.”
It turns out that the group had towed a broken car, a black Cadillac, to the scene. They then pushed it off the road and hit it with a hammer and metal bar in order to make it look more damaged. When they found they couldn’t remove the tow chain, they wrapped the chain up in hopes of concealing it. The group, including two minors, waited on cars to pass by and would fall out on the ground pretending to be hurt until a driver stopped and called for help. Each participant complained of minor injuries and was taken by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment.
Alert law enforcement officers discovered the car’s engine was cold and then uncovered the broken engine and concealed tow chain. They then arrested one defendant, Terrence Wade, at the hospital and obtained confessions from the other participants before handing the case over the Insurance Fraud Unit of the Attorney General’s Office. Terrence received jail time for his role in the caper. Others already sentenced in the Insurance Fraud case are Melissa Gates, Kildrick Deering, Terry Wade, Kevin Jones, and Connie Stewart
To add to the caper; Kevin Jones, upon suspecting his eventual arrest in the case, went out and committed robbery in order to raise bail money. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations handled that case and Jones was found guilty.
Topics Auto Mississippi
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