By Nathan Hardin
nhardin@salisburypost.com
SALISBURY — Two men believed to have ransacked a Dunns Mountain Road home while a teenager hid in the closet last week have been arrested.
Rowan deputies arrested Timothy Lynn Finney of Bringle Ferry Road and Daniel Wise of Wise Lane Sunday afternoon.
Both men were charged with three counts of felony breaking and entering, two counts of felony larceny and misdemeanor larceny.
A Salisbury Post reader helped get the ball rolling, arrest reports said, after he phoned the Sheriff’s Office last week.
The man told investigator he saw a light blue pickup with two men pull up to his neighbor’s house April 16.
When he approached the men, they told him they were looking for someone, but couldn’t say who. They then left in a hurry, the man said.
Finney and Wise knocked on the front door of another home that day, arrest reports said.
A 14-year-old, who had just gotten home from school, told officers she ran and hid in the closet when two men came to her Dunns Mountain Road home.
One of the men sat in the truck while the other broke in through the front door and stole jewelry and a guitar from the home. About $4,000 in goods was taken, the report said.
Finney, 38, and Wise, 35, were also charged with stealing more than $5,000 in electronics from a house on Yost Road.
The burglary was also reported on April 16 when the home owner returned from vacation.
Game systems, a laptop and a 60-inch and 46-inch television were taken in the theft.
Investigators used neighbors’ statements and the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles’ database to narrow the investigation.
Finney had just sold the light blue pickup to a towing company to be used as scrap metal, deputies said.
Officers caught up with the vehicle before it was taken to the scrap yard and identified it as the suspect’s truck.
Both men were in jail Monday under $20,000 bonds.
Finney and Wise, both convicted felons, have lengthy criminal records in Rowan County.
Finney was released from prison in 2010 after being convicted of felony assault with a deadly weapon, assault by pointing a gun, felony discharging a firearm into occupied property, assault with a deadly weapon, felony assault by strangulation and felony possession of a firearm by a felon.
Wise was convicted in 2010 of two counts of felony obtaining property by false pretense. He was given 36 months probation.
Contact reporter Nathan Hardin at 704-797-4246.
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