Lewis County residents arrested for felony shoplifting after allegedly stealing laptop, cat food

Kendall Sherman
February 14, 2020

BUCKHANNON – A Weston man and a Roanoke woman were arrested Wednesday on shoplifting charges after allegedly stealing a laptop from Aaron’s in 2020 and a bag of cat food and DVDs from Walmart in 2019.

Joshua Bland, 38, and Stephanie Goff, 29, were both arrested for shoplifting, third or subsequent offense, a felony, on Feb. 12.

According to several criminal complaints in the Upshur County Magistrate Clerk’s Office filed by investigating officers Lt. Doug Loudin and Patrolman Angel McCauley with the Buckhannon Police Department, most recently, Bland and Goff entered Aaron’s in Buckhannon on Jan. 22, 2020. Goff reportedly distracted the employee, while Bland allegedly concealed an HP laptop under his coat, and the two exited the store without paying for the laptop. The laptop’s value was estimated to be about $700, the file says.

When she was reviewing video footage of several cases at Walmart, McCauley saw footage of Bland and Goff from Aug. 19, 2019, during which Bland allegedly failed to ring up a bag of cat food. The report says he simply bagged the item, and they left the store.

Then, in footage from Aug. 20, 2019, McCauley reportedly saw Bland and Goff removing DVDs from Walmart without paying for them, the file says.

“After viewing the footage from the LP team at Walmart, in a video from August 20, 2019, I observed Joshua Bland selecting DVDs then entering the self-checkout. Joshua holds the two movies behind toilet paper and bag the items without scanning,” McCauley wrote in the complaint. The DVDs reportedly totaled about $10.

The file says Bland and Goff each have two previous shoplifting convictions, dated June 9, 2019 and Aug. 22, 2019.

Magistrate Kay Hurst set bail at $30,000 cash or surety for Bland and Goff, and the two remained in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail as of Friday afternoon.

The penalty for a conviction of shoplifting, third offense or subsequent offense, is imprisonment in the state penitentiary for one to 10 years, with one of the years being spent in actual confinement, and a fine ranging between $500 and $5,000.