Stolen trailer returned after pastor threatens to 'slap the devil' out of the thief

EUSTIS, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Consider him slapped. A stolen trailer was found in Lake County, and now the preacher who owns the triler is ecstatic the community slapped the devil in the face. 

“You have helped me slap the devil in the face. We got our trailer back!”

Pastor John D’Alesio showed off his trailer in a new video on Facebook Wednesday, just two days after making a desperate plea. 

“Not only do I want the trailer back. I want you to help me slap the devil in the face.”

The trailer had been stolen, swiped right from a Eustis thrift shop that he uses to support the Heartland Christian Center in Apopka. So he made a Facebook video Sunday, grabbing people’s attention by asking “we said we want you to help us slap the devil in the face.”

Then Wednesday, police called D’Alesio. The trailer had been found on this lakeside property assumed to be abandoned. But when the property owner showed up Wednesday morning, “he said there's a trailer parked in front of my house and I don’t know where it came from,” said D’Alesio.

Police put two and two together and got in touch with D’Alesio. The trailer had been emptied, but not damaged. 

D’Alesio thinks it was returned because “it got too hot to handle so the devil put our stuff back.” 

Now he just has one more message to the people who stole his trailer.

“We forgive the people who took it. we pray they come to our church and get their life turned around,” said D’Alesio. 

In the latest Facebook video, he also asks the public to help him raise money to buy an additional trailer for his church.