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Stolen Badge Leads Police To Runaway Girls, Meth Pipe

FULLERTON (CBS) — A hunt for a stolen law enforcement badge featured on a popular online site led police on Tuesday to a pair of runaway teenage girls, two suspects with burglary tools and a pipe for smoking methamphetamine.

The suspects were identified as Nathan Hohnstein, 25, and Salah Godfrey, 36, and the girls, 16 and 17, were returned to their families, Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said.

Someone who works for the city of Orange notified Fullerton police that someone was selling a sheriff's deputy's badge on Craigslist, Goodrich said.

Officers met the sellers at East Orangethorpe Avenue and South Placentia Avenue in Placentia and determined the badge was one issued to dispatchers but could be mistaken for a sworn deputy's badge, he said.

After the meeting, detectives followed the men to an address where they found the girls, the burglary tools, the drug pipe and a big-screen television stolen from a Holiday Inn in Anaheim, Goodrich said.

(©2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)

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