Franklin man arrested twice within 1 week after serving most of year in jail

<p>A man who was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2017 as a habitual offender is out of jail, and has been arrested twice in the last week.</p><p>In his latest arrest, police found evidence linking the Franklin man to recent theft reports.</p><p>The arrest came Thursday night when Steven L. Wagers was arrested on a felony charge of theft and a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass. By Friday afternoon, Wagers, 35, of 787 N. Main St., had been released from the Johnson County jail on bond.</p><p>When he was arrested on Thursday, he was out of jail on bond after being arrested a week earlier in Edinburgh on charges of possession of a restricted drug injection device and possession of cocaine — both felonies — and possession of paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.</p><p>Both new arrests come within months of his release from jail after serving time for multiple charges.</p><p>Wagers had been sentenced to 4.5 years in July 2017 after pleading guilty to eight charges, including resisting law enforcement, theft and possession of a controlled substance, related to a slew of vehicle break-ins. Wagers was connected to thefts from about 20 vehicles in the Country Gate, Tracy Ridge and Peachtree neighborhoods in New Whiteland in 2016.</p><p>He was released from the county jail, where he served his sentence, on May 29 of this year.</p><p>Here’s how he was out of jail less than a year after being sentenced: Wagers had stayed in jail before he pleaded guilty to the vehicle break-in charges, so he immediately had credit for 501 days he had already served. Because he didn’t have any disciplinary issues while he was in custody, and because his charges were Level 6 felonies, he was eligible to serve 50 percent of his sentence, according to court and jail records.</p><p>At the time of his arrest for the 2016 car break-ins, Wagers had just been released from the Indiana Department of Corrections months earlier after serving time for trafficking with an inmate and was wanted on a warrant for parole violation.</p><p>This time, he had been out of jail almost five months, but area police arrested him twice in the last week.</p><p>On Thursday, the owner of a home on State Road 135, near Olive Branch Road in the Center Grove area, called sheriff’s deputies when his security alarm went off while he wasn’t home, and he could see that someone had driven around his gate, through the grass and was in his driveway, according to a report from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.</p><p>The man, identified as Wagers, was arrested on a charge of trespassing. When his vehicle was searched, the deputy found multiple purses containing driver’s licenses and Social Security cards. Wagers told the deputy that his friends pay him to use his vehicle on the nights when they steal items, the report said.</p><p>The stolen purses and a stolen car key were linked to theft reports from Franklin, Shelbyville and Johnson County, the report said. The car key had been taken at around 2 a.m. the same day from a vehicle parked at a home in rural Franklin.</p><p>Other items had been reported stolen to Franklin police early Wednesday morning from a home in a subdivision off U.S. 31.</p><p>A week earlier, an Edinburgh police officer stopped Wagers’ vehicle after it drove through the backyard of a home about 3 a.m., according to a police report. After Wagers got out of the vehicle during the investigation, police found a syringe, a lighter torch and spoons on the ground.</p><p>Inside the vehicle, police found several syringes, multiple spoons and heroin, the report said.</p><p>The Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office will decide what, if any, charges to file in the recent cases.</p>