MEMPHIS, TN -
(WMC-TV) – A Mid-South man is behind bars for trying to sell a head to a recycling center.
"This, this is unusual," Mike Callender with the Crittenden County Sheriff's Office said.
The case itself was hardly a head-scratcher.
"This was, uh, this was pretty simple right here, yeah," Callender said. "You didn't need to be Columbo to do this one right here!"
Crittenden Recycling in Marion called Crittenden County Sheriff's deputies about a man trying to sell them a bronze head.
They recognized the head from a New Year's Day news report of a stolen statue outside the Memphis Child Advocacy Center.
"It's just mean," a representative of the Child Advocacy Center said. "To think that somebody would want to take that from the kids at the Child Advocacy Center."
CAC officials said the recovery is bittersweet.
They're thrilled people were on the lookout but curious about the whereabouts of the remainder of the statue.
"I can't even begin to understand the motivations, but they may be complex that would lead somebody to do that, but it seems like an act of desperation," the representative of the Child Advocacy Center said.
Deputies arrested Freddie Davis and charged him with felony possession of stolen scrap metal.
Investigators said he told them he merely found the head and knows nothing about the body.
"He said it came out of a field, but that's not gonna hold a lot of water because it's a fresh cut," Callender said. "There's not petina on that cut right there. So it's been cut very recently. It surely hadn't been in any field."
Deputies contacted Memphis Police investigators to help them arrest whomever may have stolen the statue.
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Freddie Davis is charged him with felony possession of stolen scrap metal
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