35,000 pounds of kidnapped formerly frozen chicken is now rotting at truck stop

Sheriff's officials in Wye, Montana, say a trucker from Nampa, Idaho, employed by Dixie River Freight, driving a tractor-trailer carrying 35,000 lbs of frozen chicken worth $80,000 had texted his company saying he’d return the chicken in exchange for ransom money. When the company declined, the suspect abandoned the trailer and left in the rig. The truck was reported stolen, but the trailer wasn’t entered into the national database, leaving deputies to discover it by chance this week.



Paige Pavalone, spokeswoman for the Missoula County Sheriff's Office says the truck was reported stolen about a month ago. The 53-foot trailer abandoned at the Flying J truck stop is now dripping the juices of rotting chickens and attracting flies. "This is pretty unusual, not only is it disgusting, but it's a huge waste of food and resources and this is a huge felony theft case right now," said Pavalone. Now the health department has to figure out a way to get the rotten meat to the landfill.

It looks like the best plan now is to wrap and plug up the trailer and take the chicken to the dump in its original casing. "You want to get rid of that potential for there to be pests flying around, disease vectors, the flies, but in and of itself it's not a hazardous material," explained Shannon Therriault, the environmental health supervisor for the Missoula City-County Health Department. The other question is what to do with the truck.



It's hard to throw away something worth tens of thousands of dollars, but it will take a lot of work to get it back in working order, even if it's not used for food anymore. The decision is up to the insurance company. "I don't think… it'll be up to them whether they want to bury the whole truck, but I don't think that's what they're planning to do," said Therriault. Dixie River Freight said they knew nothing about this and had no comment.

With news video.