Man accused of stealing a backhoe to make a 10-mile drive to an airport to catch his flight

• Police believe a man stole a backhoe and drove it to an airport in Illinois to catch a flight.
• Footage appears to show the man arriving with the equipment and leaving it outside the airport.

A man from southern Illinois has been charged with theft accused of stealing a backhoe and driving it 10 miles to an airport to catch a flight to the West Coast, authorities said earlier this week.

Security camera footage posted on the Williamson County Sheriff's Office Facebook page appears to show a man arriving at the Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois in the digging equipment.

He then parks the backhoe and jumps down holding a guitar case, leaving it and calmly walking into the airport, police said.

"Deputies were informed that a backhoe was parked in the airport parking lot, which was suspicious in nature," authorities said in a statement.

The owner of the vehicle later arrived at the scene and identified it as belonging to his company. It had been parked at a job site nearby.

"You hear of people either getting rides from other people, borrowing cars, stealing cars, but a backhoe being stolen from a job site, driven 10 miles to an airport for an individual to catch a flight all the way to the West Coast carrying a guitar, that is unique," Sheriff Jeff Diederich said, according to local news outlet KFVS12.

The man who is alleged to have stolen the backhoe, a piece of machinery weighing many tons that is used to move heavy debris, was identified as Timothy J. Baggott of Carbondale. Baggott flew to the West Coast and was later arrested in Nevada.

Baggott was charged with theft in excess of $10,000, police said. The charge is a felony, and he is currently being held in the Elko County Jail in Nevada on a $40,000 bond, KFVS12 reports.

Facebook users seemed to support the backhoe driver, however. One user joked, "The guy just was trying to make it on time for his flight. What's the big deal?"

"Well, at least he didn't do anything stupid other than borrowing the backhoe to go to the airport, and for safety, he did put the bucket down," another user wrote.

It wasn't as if he took the equipment to "keep it or be destructive, come on, give the man a break."