MUDDY CREEK TWP — State police say they stopped a suspected theft of more than $20,000 in specialty construction equipment.

The would-be thief, a Maryland man, ran off from a Route 19 business in Muddy Creek Township on Sunday but he didn’t get far.

Troopers arrested El Salvadoran native Wilmer Alberto Melendez Chicas, 37, of Silver Spring, who is in the Butler County Prison on $75,000 bail.

Police were called about 4 p.m. to Desuta Concrete Forms for a report of three men loading items into a truck at the small construction firm.

This was no ordinary property, said Trooper Kenneth Walker, the lead investigator. The items were aluminum panels used to form concrete walls.

“I viewed 76 of the concrete wall forms stacked in the back of a box truck,” Walker said Monday.

Each panel weighs about 10 pounds and is valued at $300, he said, making the attempted haul a $22,800 caper.

The property is owned by J.L. Edwards Enterprises, a construction business in Clifton, Va., which is leasing the panels to the local firm, Walker said.

Troopers detained two of the men at Desuta Concrete Forms but Chicas fled, according to court documents. His attempted getaway ended nearby at Brown’s Country Kitchen on Route 488, where police caught him.

Walker later spoke to a supervisor for J.L. Edwards, who knew Melendez Chicas, who used to work for a recently terminated subcontractor of the company.

Police said Melendez Chicas was the only suspect charged in the investigation because he eventually corroborated the account of the other two men who told police that they had driven up from Maryland for what they believed was legitimate work.

Melendez Chicas is charged with a felony count of theft and a summary count of defiant trespass.