Police arrested a Carter County couple after witnesses allegedly caught them breaking into a barn Friday.
Officers of the Carter County Sheriff’s Department arrested Rachel Bridge, 21, of 373 McKeehan Ridge Road, Elizabethton, and Roger Marciszewski, 31, of 400 S. Lane Court, Elizabethton, and charged them each with burglary and theft of property over $1,000. Officers also served Bridge with an outstanding warrant charging her with failure to appear.
Around 8 a.m. Friday, deputies and investigators with the Sheriff’s Department responded to a call of a burglary in progress at a barn on Cash Hollow Road. When officers arrived, the suspects already had fled the scene, but two witnesses were on hand to report what they had seen.
Both witnesses reported that over the past several weeks, they and other neighbors had seen a man and woman walking McKeehan Ridge Road and entering the property at (Cash Hollow Road), CCSD Lt. Harmon Duncan said in his report. “Witnesses said they were often met by a blue Ford Taurus with black front and rear bumpers.”
One of the witnesses told Duncan that the owner had asked him to keep an eye on the property. He recently found a broken lock on the barn and had replaced it and had also used wood screws to secure the door to an adjoining building.
On Friday morning, both witnesses went to the barn and saw the same man and woman walk onto the property with a backpack, Duncan said.
“(The witnesses) approached the barn, found the lock broken off and opened the sliding door, coming face-to-face with a masked man and woman in the barn placing items in the backpack,” Duncan said. “Both suspects fled, the man losing his mask.”
The witnesses provided descriptions of the man and woman, and officers began to search the area for them.
“Several neighbors stopped us and identified the two suspects as having gone to 373 McKeehan Ridge Road,” Duncan said.
When officers arrived at the home on McKeehan Ridge Road, they found a Ford Taurus matching the description given by the witnesses with several people inside, two of whom were identified as Bridge and Marciszewski.
Officers spoke with the owner of the home at 373 McKeehan Ridge Road, who said Bridge was his daughter and that she had been staying in a camper with her boyfriend, whom he identified as Marciszewski.
The witnesses identified Bridge and Marciszewski as the couple they had seen entering the barn on several occasions and said they were the ones they found in the barn Friday when they went to check it.
The barn’s owner, who was out of town, told officers he estimated the value of the items taken from the barn at more than $1,000.
Both Bridge and Marciszewski appeared in General Sessions Court on Tuesday morning where they were arraigned on the charges against them.
Judge Keith Bowers appointed the Public Defender’s Office to represent Marciszewski and lowered his bond to $2,000. Bowers appointed attorney Cameron Hyder to represent Bridge and set her bond at $2,000. Both Bridge and Marciszewski are scheduled to return to court on Oct. 13.