Idaho trucker accused of ditching chicken load arrested

[September 27, 2014]  (Reuters) - Idaho authorities said on Friday the truck driver suspected of holding 37,000 pounds of frozen chicken for ransom before ditching the trailer and leaving the fowl to rot at a Montana truck stop has been arrested.

Christopher Hall, 42, was apprehended in Meridian, Idaho by a fugitive task force led by the U.S. Marshals Service on Friday afternoon, Nampa Police Lieutenant Eric Skoglund said.

Skoglund said Hall was being sought for a federal parole violation and that he had not been charged with crimes relating to the theft of the truck.

Authorities said the refrigerated semi-trailer containing the chicken was to arrive in Washington state last month. The shipment was arranged by an Idaho trucking firm that got into a dispute with its driver, who tried to extort money to deliver the load before abandoning it, police said.

Noxious fumes and juices oozing from the semi-trailer – detached from the stolen tractor – were reported to authorities in Missoula earlier this week during a warming trend in which temperatures climbed into the 80s.

Skoglund said police found the stolen Volvo tractor in an abandoned Nampa parking lot on Thursday evening.

An inspection of the trailer by the Missoula City-County Health Department revealed "it was a little smelly," but the chicken was not a hazard since no one was seeking to salvage it for food.

It was unclear how long the chicken was parked at the truck stop west of Missoula before the driver flew the coop. The load was once valued at $80,000.

Dixie River Freight in Nampa reported the rig missing on Aug. 27 and stolen in early September when the driver went "totally off the radar" after repeatedly demanding his employers transfer funds into his account to pay for fuel and other transport costs, police said.

The company told police the driver said at one point he would not deliver the load as planned to Kent, Washington, unless it came up with a certain amount of money, which police said could be seen as "technically, extortion." Police did not say how much money he was demanding.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Michael Perry)

[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.