Tenant charged with clearing out house

Woman pleads innocent to embezzlement, theft

 A Redding woman thought she was doing a friend a favor when she let her stay in a furnished Crescent City home that was about to be foreclosed on.

Then nearly all the furnishings turned up missing after a series of yard sales, give-aways and face-to-face transactions, according to Crescent City police.

The homeowner let Patti Metcalf, 59, stay in her home in June and pay rent until the owner could come get her property, stated court documents.

By July, the Del Norte County District Attorney’s Office said Metcalf had sold or given away more than $11,000 of the homeowner’s property at multiple yard sales in front of the home at 1177 Gainard St.

On Friday, Metcalf pleaded not guilty to charges of embezzlement by grand theft and grand theft of personal property in Del Norte County Superior Court.

The DA’s office said Metcalf is scheduled to go to trial next February.

“She was having yard sales every other weekend,” said District Attorney Mike Riese.

But nothing that was sold or given away  belonged to Metcalf — it was all the homeowner’s property, according to court documents.

“She either would give it away, sell it at garage sales, hand-to-hand transactions — she wasn’t discriminating in how she did it, she just did it,” said Riese.

A concerned neighbor called the homeowner in Redding to alert her, documents state.

The homeowner could actually see some of her property in people’s yards near her home when she came back to Crescent City, the documents state.

A police report listed televisions, paintings, antique sofas, a hutch, stereo systems, CDs, DVDs, a coffee table, a bunk bed, a washer, a dryer, a refrigerator and stove among the items that were disposed of, along with dozens of household items and kitchen appliances.