Marine Patrol finishes 8-month investigation into Pasquotank River thefts.
A Marine Patrol investigation into crab pot thefts in the Pasquotank River that covered 8 months ended in the arrest of a Chowan County man this week.
Travis Wade Hollowell, 30, of Tyner, was arrested Sunday by the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office and charged in Camden County with felony larceny, misdemeanor larceny and injuring/destroying/stealing crab pot buoys; and in Chowan County with felony possession of stolen goods/property, misdemeanor possession of stolen goods/property and injuring/destroying/stealing crab pot buoys.
Hollowell was released from jail on an $8,000 secured bond and awaits his next court appearance, scheduled for today.
The case began in Apri, when commercial fisherman Ut Huynh of Shiloh reported he was missing 50 crab pots he had set in the Pasquotank River. During the next few weeks, Brian Deanes, an officer with the Marine Patrol, searched for the stolen crab pots, without success.
In August, an employee of Huynh’s reported another 85 crab pots stolen from the Pasquotank River. This time, when Deanes and Dwayne Whealton, another Marine Patrol officer, searched, they found crab pots that matched the description of those belonging to Huynh’s stolen pots marked as belonging to Hollowell.
The pots had been repainted and sections of the buoys had been cut off. The markers on the buoys led Marine Patrol to serve a search warrant and search Hollowell’s home, where they found the missing buoy sections engraved with Huynh’s boat registration numbers. In all, they recovered 78 pots identified as stolen. The pots had a value of $2,410.
Hollowell was also charged on an unrelated warrant in Chowan County for dealing in crabs without a dealer’s license. Further charges are pending.
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