ABBEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — Authorities in southwest Georgia say someone stole nine buses used to haul watermelons and sold them to a scrap yard.

WALB-TV reports (http://bit.ly/1BBFnh4 ) the Wilcox County Sheriff's Office found invoice tickets at a scrap yard showing nine old school buses, which had been converted to carry melons, had been sold and crushed. Steve Mauldin of the sheriff's office says the owner of the buses, who lives in Florida, says that none of them should have been sold.

Mauldin says an arrest warrant has been issued for a man named on the invoice tickets as the seller. He says a man by the same name was convicted in Crisp County last fall for taking buses that were also sold for scrap. That person was sentenced to 10 years on probation.

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