Veterans Bus stolen, recovered; suspect is in jail
Published 5:21 pm Wednesday, February 28, 2018
- Daniel Graham Wynn
MOULTRIE, Ga. — It’s not uncommon after a couple’s breakup for a guy to leave a note to his ex expressing his feelings, whether pleading, romantic or spiteful in tone.
But it’s not every day that he leaves a stolen bus in her back yard, ransacks her house and steals a dead bolt from the front door.
That is the set of circumstances that led on Wednesday to the arrest of a Thomas County man accused in the theft the previous day of a bus used for transporting area veterans to their medical appointments.
Daniel Graham Wynn was picked up shortly before 2 p.m. at his work place in Thomasville in connection with taking the bus that was reported stolen about 24 hours earlier, according to the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office.
The 2005 Blue Bird bus was located shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday and later was returned to the group that maintains and operates it.
The bus was found abandoned in the yard of Haley Snipes’ 466 Peachtree Road residence a short distance out of Berlin.
The theft of the bus had generated extensive attention on social media after the sheriff’s office posted it on the Facebook social media website.
“Somebody saw it on Facebook and called us and said it was over there,” sheriff’s Sgt. Chris Robinson said.
The post generated the most ever “shares” of any on the agency’s Facebook posts, he said, as the public expressed anger and concern about it affecting veterans, some of whom are elderly and disabled, who depend on the bus to take them to a Florida veterans’ medical facility.
“The victim (Snipes) was involved in an altercation with a male subject Monday night,” sheriff’s Sgt. Austin Cannon said. “She put him (Wynn) out at the Chevron.”
The convenience store is located on Veterans Parkway and the Tifton Highway.
Wynn apparently began walking south before coming across the bus, which was parked under a shed behind the old Colquitt County Prison a short distance from Veterans Parkway.
Video surveillance cameras indicated that the bus, operated by the South Georgia Veterans Activities Committee Inc., was taken from the shed between 4:24 a.m. and 5:40 a.m. Tuesday, police said.
While at Snipes’ residence, investigators discovered the burglary there.
“As we were checking the residence for any subjects we discovered that the home had been ransacked,” Cannon said. “There was a lot of property damage inside.”
The interior of the house also yielded another clue.
“A signed note was found inside the residence from the male subject,” Cannon said. “It was written and signed by Daniel Wynn.”
Wynn, 35, of Boston, has been charged with two felonies — burglary and theft by taking motor vehicle — and a misdemeanor charge of criminal damage to property.
Police think he walked away from the Peachtree Road residence, leaving the bus behind.
“Witnesses saw a slender, dark-haired white male walking from that house in the morning at about 7 a.m.,” Cannon said. “That matches his (Wynn’s) description.”
The bus was not damaged, said Tom Davis, a co-chairman of the Veterans Activities Committee that operates the bus.
“We keep coolers in there to keep sandwiches and drinks cool for the riders,” Davis said. “All that stuff was still in the bus. Apparently all he did was get in it and drive it to his girlfriend’s.”
Volunteers drive the bus from Moultrie to the Lake City, Fla., VA Hospital, picking up other veterans in Coolidge, Thomasville, Boston, Quitman and Valdosta. Since the bus runs on Thursdays none of the veterans missed their medical care, Davis said.
Mount Olive Baptist Church had offered the use of its bus in the event the veterans bus didn’t turn up, Davis said.
Prior to learning that the bus was safe and sound there was some consternation.
“One of our drivers had gone up there just before noon to check the oil or something on the bus,” Davis said. “He called the other three drivers, and they didn’t have it. He called me and said please tell me you let somebody use the bus. I told him I don’t let anybody use that bus. He said, it’s missing, then.”
Wynn has a prior criminal history here, but his only felony arrests stemmed from a 2013 domestic violence incident, when he was charged with two counts of cruelty to children, criminal negligence, battery and obstructing or hindering persons making an emergency phone call, according to Colquitt County Superior Court records. He was accused of committing family violence against his then-wife in the presence of two children, one of whom was 3 at the time. Wynn settled the criminal case by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct and was sentenced to 12 months’ probation.