Cops: Pastor Burglarized a Parishioner Home ... Again

Rickey Alan Reed charged with stealing pain pills from 2nd home
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 4, 2013 2:01 PM CDT

A Tennessee pastor is in jail after he was allegedly caught burglarizing the home of one of his former parishioners ... for the second time. Rickey Alan Reed was already on probation for the first incident—he was caught on video breaking into the home of one of his church members in 2011, and police say he'd been accused of breaking into other homes to steal pain pills. He stopped pastoring at that point, but another former parishioner, Jewel Proper, 70, had been trying to help him beat his addiction. Instead, she found him in her kitchen on the morning of Aug. 8, holding her pain medication.

"I opened the back door and there he stood in the kitchen. I grabbed him by his shirt and I said, 'I got you now, you ain't goin' nowhere," she tells the Tennessean. "He kept saying, 'Jewel, let me go.' I said, 'No! You stole my medicine.'" Proper had noticed her painkillers and her husband's prostate cancer medications had been vanishing, so the couple installed an alarm. Four days later, she caught Reed. The 56-year-old is charged with felony aggravated burglary and misdemeanor theft. (More weird crimes stories.)

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