FAIRFIELD – Two local men have been charged in connection with a botched burglary April 29 when someone tried to steal heavy equipment from a warehouse, police said Friday.

A trailer used in the burglary broke down under the weight of the equipment and the thieves fled with the trailer placed upside-down on their pickup truck, police said.

Fairfield residents Joseph Levesque, 27, and Joshua Elliott, 29, face felony charges of burglary and theft, according to William Beaulieu, the investigating officer for the Fairfield Police Department.

Levesque was charged the day after the burglary and Elliott was charged Thursday night, Beaulieu said.

According to Beaulieu, the burglary happened about 8:30 a.m. at an industrial warehouse off Kennebec Street, near the Shawmut Dam. Inside the warehouse, which is owned by the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, police found several industrial conveyors spread out on the floor.

The eight pieces of metal equipment weigh about 300 pounds each.

“It was obvious they had overloaded their trailer and it broke and they had to leave everything there,” Beaulieu said. “The trailer’s wheels collapsed.”

Police later discovered that the 2001 GMC pickup truck, belonging to Levesque’s father, had sustained a broken axle. The trailer belongs to Elliott’s father.

The botched burglary was discovered by a worker at the dam. Because the burglars had to jettison the equipment, they threw the broken trailer onto the back of the pickup.

A second employee arriving at the Shawmut Dam saw the truck leaving the scene and described it for police.

“It isn’t every day you see a pickup truck hauling a trailer upside-down on the back of a truck,” Beaulieu said.

Fairfield officer Matthew Wilcox was out looking for the truck and saw it in a driveway, with the trailer still atop the truck, Beaulieu said. Both Levesque and Elliott were there, but they denied involvement with the burglary.

Beaulieu said he searched the truck and found a box containing industrial aluminum conduits, which were later determined to have been stolen from the warehouse.

All told, the value of the stolen items and almost-stolen conveyor equipment totaled more than $4,000, Beaulieu said. Police theorize the equipment was stolen to sell for scrap metal.

Based on that and other undisclosed evidence, Levesque was arrested the next day, April 30, and Elliott turned himself in at the police station about 6:30 p.m. Thursday, according to Beaulieu.

Both men were released from police custody — Levesque on $350 unsecured bail and Elliott on $100 cash bail.

Both are scheduled to appear in Somerset County Superior Court on June 8, Beaulieu said.