Owen County Sheriff Sam Hobbs arrested county commissioners president and fellow Republican Donnie Minnick Monday on charges of conflict of interest and official misconduct, two weeks after Minnick apparently lied about the procurement of two county trucks from which he may have pocketed $8,500.
The arrest of Minnick, a 63-year-old Gosport farmer, came after an investigation into the county’s 2012 purchase of a 1997 Mack brand semitruck that had belonged to Minnick and had been used on his dairy farm.
Investigators allege Minnick used a middleman, a worker on his farm, to cover up his involvement in the sale. They also say Minnick sold a broken-down, county-owned semitruck for scrap and kept the cash.
Details of the deal mirror the recent case of former highway superintendent Joe Pettijohn, a longtime Owen County employee fired in October after details emerged about a scheme in which he is alleged to have bought, and then sold to the county, a used hydraulic backhoe. He is accused of paying a middleman $300 to pretend to be the seller, then making a $4,697 profit for himself from the county.
Minnick fired Pettijohn during the Oct. 2 county commissioners meeting, two weeks after the highway superintendent had been charged with two counts of theft, in addition to the same felonies Minnick now faces.
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