ST. GEORGE — A man was arrested Tuesday for illegal possession of weapons and drugs after he was reported for strange behavior in a St. George neighborhood.
Police were first alerted to the situation after receiving a call around noon reporting a suspicious vehicle in a neighborhood near 2000 East, St. George Police officer Tiffany Atkin said.
Thomas Huffman, a resident in the neighborhood, told St. George News he first realized someone was at his house when his dogs started barking at the front door.
Assuming that a neighbor had dropped by, Huffman, who was in his back yard at the time, rounded the corner of his house to find a man, later identified as Wiley Earl Lavender Redding, shirtless and standing in the front yard with a juvenile female.
“They both looked in a panic and like they definitely were not expecting me to approach them from that angle, and I said, ‘I think you’re at the wrong house,’” Huffman said.
Huffman said that Redding would only say “Yahweh” and repeated the word 30-40 times. Huffman walked back around the side of his house, and the pair followed him.
Huffman instructed them to leave his property before calling the police from inside his house. He watched through his window to make sure they left, and the pair walked back to a gray Ford Fusion they had parked in his driveway.
“They were arguing with each other on the side of the car, and then I noticed while I was on the phone with dispatch describing who they were, that there was a pistol on the ground in front of the driver’s side left front tire,” Huffman said.
When police arrived, they recovered the pellet gun on the ground and found an incomplete AR-15 style rifle, a fixed blade knife, shotgun shells and other various gun parts in the car, Atkin said. Officers also found marijuana and other drug paraphernalia inside the car, she said.
It was unclear whether the man was under the influence of drugs at the time of the event, Atkin said, but because of his behavior, responding officers placed him in handcuffs and a protective helmet.
“He really wasn’t acting very normal,” Atkin said.
Redding was booked into Purgatory Correctional Facility and charged with one third-degree felony for possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, misdemeanor counts of possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor count of interference with an arresting officer, a third-degree felony for damaging a jail and an infraction for negligent collision.
He has a pending court appearance scheduled for Friday.
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