Deantae Walker

Two men have been formally charged by a grand jury in connection with the theft of eight new Corvettes from the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly Plant.

Deantae Cortez Walker, 21, and Amarion Nasir Jordan, 22, were indicted last week on charges of engaging in organized crime, theft by unlawful taking of property valued at $1 million or more by complicity and first-degree criminal mischief.

Walker is also charged with tampering with physical evidence, third-degree fleeing or evading police and resisting arrest.

The charges were the result of an investigation by the Bowling Green Police Department into the theft of the cars, which authorities said had a collective value of $1.2 million.

All eight cars were recovered at various locations in Bowling Green and returned to the Corvette plant.

BGPD became involved after the Warren County Sheriff’s Office contacted city police on March 22 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, according to prior testimony from BGPD Officer Jennifer Pierce.

A third stolen Corvette was found parked at an Anise Lane address near the apartment complex on Plano Road, and two more missing Corvettes were recovered at an address on Cumberland Trace.

As police tried to hunt down the remaining three missing cars, a man contacted the BGPD and reported that he was a transport driver who had met two men in Bowling Green who had scheduled for him to take two 2017 Corvettes to Detroit.

When the transport driver arrived at the location at Lowe’s on American Avenue for the pickup, however, he met two men who had three brand-new 2025 Corvettes waiting for him to transport, according to a police report.

“(The transport driver) advised (the two men) started to rush him while he was loading the vehicles and he saw that they had damage on the bottom of them,” the BGPD report said. “(The driver) told dispatch that this transaction was starting to seem ‘weird.’ ”

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 in a March hearing that surveillance footage from the Corvette plant showed 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.

Walker is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Warren Circuit Court.

No court date has been set for Jordan, whose indictment indicates that he is in custody in Michigan.