Man charged with stealing parts from logging equipment

A 45-year-old Columbia Falls man faces felony counts of theft and criminal mischief after he was charged with stealing batteries and electrical wiring from logging equipment and trucks at the F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. timber mill west of Columbia Falls.

Tim Bauer has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He faces up to 10 years and a $50,000 fine for each of the two charges.

According to court documents, a Stoltze employee contacted the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office on Aug. 27, 2012, after a log loader wouldn’t start and workers discovered the missing electrical parts. The logging equipment hadn’t been used for about two weeks.

All told, six batteries and various wiring harnesses and battery cables valued at $3,138 were missing from a Mack truck, a Dart log stacker and a Kenworth truck. Stoltze estimated labor costs to repair the equipment at $3,000.

The sheriff’s deputy who responded to the scene located some of the missing items in a ditch not far away, along with an alternator and pruning shears with two-foot handles wrapped in duct tape.

The deputy talked to an employee at Pacific Recycling in Evergreen and learned that a man had sold a large amount of vehicle-related scrap to the company three days before the theft was reported.

The man, identified by driver’s license information he provided at the recycling company, sold seven pounds of copper, 50 pounds of radiators, 306 pounds of batteries and 146 pounds of aluminum.

Two of the batteries were of the same make and model as the missing Stoltze batteries and had identical dates scratched on the top.

Bauer has lived in the Flathead about nine years after moving here from Utah. His priors include no insurance and traffic citations, a misdemeanor charge for bad checks and a trespassing charge.