Stacey McCurry spent years without the Yamaha four-wheeler stolen from his Stillwater, Oklahoma, property. Then he learned something considerably stranger than the original theft: law enforcement had recovered it years earlier.
The Grady County Sheriff’s Office recovered the 2016 Yamaha Big Bear in 2021. By the time McCurry tried to reclaim it, however, the sheriff’s office had obtained a court order and titled the four-wheeler in its own name, KOCO reported.
McCurry says he has the original title and bill of sale. He also offered to reimburse the sheriff’s office for the money it put into the ATV after recovering it. The department still would not hand it over.
Now McCurry is suing, while Oklahoma law provides a detailed process for returning stolen property to its lawful owner, including a provision that specifically addresses the expenses incurred in preserving the property.
Whose ATV?
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McCurry told KOCO that thieves broke through multiple padlocks on two shipping containers in 2020 and stole the ATV, which he said cost him about $6,000 and had barely been used.
He reported the theft to the Payne County Sheriff’s Office. According to McCurry, he heard nothing more about the Yamaha until earlier this year, when he learned it had been recovered.
Grady County deputies had actually found the ATV in 2021 among other stolen property. In an earlier interview with KOCO, the sheriff’s office said the four-wheeler had not been properly reported, preventing deputies from identifying its owner at the time.
The agency eventually sought court approval to keep it.
Undersheriff Kori Brewer told KOCO that prosecutors had advised the department to purge evidence from closed cases. The sheriff’s office obtained a judge’s order and titled the Yamaha in the department’s name.
That created a problem when McCurry later appeared with documents he says prove the ATV belongs to him.
“I asked him, you know, can I come down and get my four-wheeler? And he said, no, it’s ours,” McCurry told KOCO.
The Repair Bill
Brewer said the sheriff’s office spent roughly $1,060 getting the Yamaha back into working condition, including the cost of tires and a battery.
McCurry said he offered to reimburse those expenses.
That detail overlaps with an unusually specific piece of Oklahoma law.
In legislation governing the return of stolen property, Oklahoma lawmakers wrote that the state intends stolen or embezzled property held by a municipality, county, or the state to be returned to the proper person or lawful owner “without unnecessary delay.”
The same law requires a peace officer to make a good-faith effort to locate and notify the owner when stolen property comes into law enforcement custody. An owner can apply to a court for its return, and property that is no longer needed as evidence may be released after satisfactory proof of ownership.
Another provision addresses the exact kind of expense at issue in McCurry’s dispute. Under Section 1322, a magistrate may order stolen property delivered to its owner after satisfactory proof of title and after the owner pays the “reasonable and necessary expenses” incurred in preserving it.
The statute does not decide McCurry’s case by itself. The circumstances surrounding the earlier court order, what information was available to Grady County at the time, and the legal effect of the sheriff’s office obtaining title are matters for the court now handling the dispute.
But Oklahoma’s statutory framework does expressly contemplate both returning stolen property to its owner and accounting for preservation costs along the way.
Back To Court
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has also addressed the state’s return-of-property law.
In Kolosha v. State, the court described Section 1321 as a remedy designed to facilitate the return of property held by government agencies and pointed to the Legislature’s instruction that property go back to its proper person or lawful owner without unnecessary delay.
The circumstances in Kolosha were different from McCurry’s dispute, and the decision does not resolve who currently has legal title to the Yamaha. It does show that Oklahoma courts have treated the return statute as a mechanism for deciding who is entitled to property held by law enforcement.
Brewer told KOCO the Grady County Sheriff’s Office now wants a judge to settle the ownership question.
“We’re going to have to have a judge, you know, determine who the rightful owner of this property is,” Brewer said.
Jeremiah Gregory, the district attorney for Oklahoma Judicial District 9, which includes Payne and Logan counties, had a much sharper assessment. He told KOCO that the sheriff’s office was not breaking the law but said law enforcement has a duty to return property to crime victims.
“This is exactly why people hate their government,” Gregory said.
McCurry has now taken the dispute to court. Because the underlying lawsuit filing was not independently accessible, its specific claims and requested relief are not characterized here beyond KOCO’s report that he is suing the sheriff’s office to recover the four-wheeler.