A grand jury will hear the case against a man charged in connection with the theft of eight Corvettes worth $1.2 million from the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly Plant.

Deantae Cortez Walker, 21, of Westland, Michigan, appeared Friday in Warren District Court for a preliminary hearing on charges that include three counts of receiving stolen property (valued at $10,000 or more) and one count each of engaging in organized crime, first-degree criminal mischief, third-degree fleeing or evading police and resisting arrest.

Warren District Judge John Brown bound the case over to the grand jury for consideration of a possible indictment.

At the hearing, Officer Jennifer Pierce of the Bowling Green Police Department testified that police encountered Walker outside Lowe’s on American Avenue after officers investigating the theft of the sports cars were contacted by a man who said he was hired to transport two 2017 Corvettes to Detroit.

When the transport driver arrived at Lowe’s to pick up the cars, he met two men who had three brand-new 2025 Corvettes for him to transport, according to police records.

The transport driver told police the men rushed him as he was loading the vehicles and he noticed damage on the bottom of the cars.

“(The driver) told dispatch that this transaction was starting to seem ‘weird,’ ” a BGPD incident report said.

Walker was arrested after a foot pursuit and the man with Walker fled in a Jeep with Ohio tags, according to police records.

Walker declined to make a statement to police but appeared to allude to the incident while being booked into Warren County Regional Jail.

“While jail staff was starting the process of getting Walker lodged he made the statement ‘if I would have made it back to Michigan I would have been paid big,'” a police report said.

Pierce testified Friday that police viewed surveillance footage from the Corvette plant showing a group of eight men driving the cars, which were destined for shipment, off the lot after having cut through a fence.

Pierce said the key fobs were in each of the cars, allowing for the thieves to access them.

BGPD became involved in the investigation after the Warren County Sheriff’s Office called them to come to a Plano Road apartment complex, where a woman called 911 to report seeing a man drive into the parking lot in a brand new red Corvette with the price sticker still on it.

The woman reported that the man got out of the vehicle and ran toward the front of the apartment complex, and that she had not seen the man before on the property.

Corvette plant quality manager Jenni Druen confirmed that the car had come from the plant, and WCSO deputies found a second Corvette at the apartment complex that had come from the lot, Pierce testified.

After Corvette employees went through the plant’s inventory and learned eight Corvettes were missing from the back lot, police found a third stolen car parked on Anise Lane across from the Plano Road apartment complex, and two more missing Corvettes were found at an address on Cumberland Trace.

The final three missing Corvettes were recovered outside Lowe’s, where Walker was arrested.

Pierce testified Friday that no other arrests have been made.