TENNESSSEE COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL BY FORMER PREACHER Former Nashville preacher faces theft charges - Nashville, Tennessee - Monday, 01/29/07 - Tennessean.com:

Monday, 01/29/07
Former Nashville preacher faces theft charges
Texas incident follows 2001 Brentwood arrest

A former Nashville preacher, Star Search champion and country music singer was caught on video stealing computer equipment from a Texas middle school, according to police in the Dallas suburb of Midlothian.

David Nelson Slater, 44, has been charged with six counts of burglary of a building, a felony in Texas. He was being held in the Ellis County Jail with bail set at $180,000.

Slater was a minister at West End Church of Christ in Nashville when he was arrested in 2001 by Brentwood police on charges of breaking into unlocked cars at the Brentwood YMCA and taking wallets with cash and credit cards.

That time, Slater was caught after police staked out the YMCA for two weeks.

In 2002, he pleaded guilty to 25 counts of vehicle burglary, forgery and credit card
fraud in a Williamson County court and received a 90-day jail sentence.

Slater was arrested for violating the terms of his five-year probation agreement in October 2005 by Cedar Hill, Texas, police and charged with two counts of credit card
abuse, according to Tennessean files.

Just after midnight last Monday morning, a video surveillance camera at the Midlothian school taped Slater entering one of the school'scomputer labs with a key and leaving with several computers, authorities said.

Additional footage, provided to police by the Midlothian school district, shows Slater taking computer equipment and loading it into his car, police said.

He is a suspect in other burglaries at the school over the past two years.

Investigators believe Slater may have gotten the key while serving as an associate minister at a local church that was using the school for Sunday services.

A search of his home in Cedar Hill uncovered the stolen goods, police said, and Slater was arrested Friday.

Slater won $100,000 as a Star Search champion in 1987 and went on to make two country music albums, opening for Waylon Jennings and the Oak Ridge Boys.