MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis crime task force arrested 13 people after catching them unloading more than $250,000 worth of stolen fried chicken from an 18-wheeler parked behind a motel, authorities said, in a bust that also turned up guns, fentanyl and cocaine.
The Memphis Safe Task Force made the arrests Tuesday while serving an outstanding warrant on 33-year-old Javunte Johnson for aggravated robbery. Officers found Johnson and a dozen others pulling pallets of chicken off a semi-trailer in the rear lot of an Economy Inn in the 3800 block of Lamar Avenue.
When police arrived, the group ran. All 13 were caught.
Investigators later determined the poultry load was stolen and valued at about $250,000. They also recovered three handguns, roughly $110,000 in other stolen merchandise, and narcotics including fentanyl and cocaine.
Johnson was charged with theft of property valued between $60,000 and $250,000 and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, in addition to the robbery warrant. Two others in the group, Quantrivious Shavers, 25, and Jessie Moore, 37, were also charged as felons in possession of a handgun.
The truck driver, identified as Robert Wilson, 56, told investigators he was handing over the load to settle a drug debt owed to one of the men arrested at the scene. Authorities said they contacted Wilson’s employer and the company that hired the carrier to confirm the cargo had been stolen.
The U.S. Marshals Service, which highlighted the case in a task-force update, said the operation was part of a broader sweep that produced 49 arrests that day. Officials have framed the Memphis Safe Task Force as a multi-agency effort targeting violent crime, illegal guns and street-level trafficking in a city long plagued by both.
The chicken heist quickly became the detail that traveled. A quarter-million dollars in poultry being offloaded behind a motel is the kind of case that sounds like a punchline until the rest of the inventory is listed: firearms, fentanyl, cocaine and a driver who said he was paying a drug debt with someone else’s freight.
Freight theft is not new along major trucking corridors. What made this one stand out was the combination of a high-value food load, a motel parking lot, a fleeing crowd and the drugs and guns recovered in the same stop. Local outlets reported bonds in the case ranging as high as $280,000 for Johnson.
Task-force officials have used the case as another data point in a larger enforcement campaign. Since the unit launched, it has reported thousands of arrests and more than 2,000 illegal firearms seized, according to the Marshals Service.
For now, the charges are moving through the system the same way most cargo-theft cases do: theft counts, weapons counts, and whatever drug possession or delivery charges investigators attach to the evidence found on scene. The unusual part is already on the record. Thirteen people. A stolen semi-load of chicken. A motel lot. And a driver who said the birds were payment on a debt.
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