Photo: Evgeny Ndn//Unsplash
The thought has probably crossed everyone’s mind at least once. You’re getting ready for a day on the hill and head over to the communal racks to leave your board or skis outside before heading into the lodge. You didn’t bother renting one of the resort’s lockers. It’s ok though, who’d steal your board in the five minutes it takes to run to the ticket window?
The thought creeps into your mind anyway.
“Man, it would suck if I came back and my gear was gone.”
One person walked out to a rack outside Boreal Mountain Resort in Soda Springs, California Monday and was slapped with the realization that their snowboard had, in fact, been stolen. Not one to feel too sorry for themselves, the victim reportedly went on a hunt for the board and actually found it sitting in the back of a truck in the parking lot. He encountered 25-year-old Shane Farnsworth-Slattery of Grass Valley, 23-year-old Dakoda Hamilton of Grass Valley and 38-year-old Brandon Henslee of Nevada City and confronted them about the stolen board. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a very peaceful encounter, and Farnsworth-Slattery is accused of attacking the victim before he and his friends fled the scene.
After the encounter, the victim reported the stolen board to local police with a thorough description of the three suspects, their truck, and license plate number. The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office was actually able to track down the vehicle and showed up at one of the suspect’s homes in nearby Grass Valley, where they found four more stolen snowboards, drug paraphernalia, and learned that two of the three thieves were on probation.
As you can guess, the three thieves are now getting more than they’d bargained for. Police booked them into Wayne Brown Correctional Facility in Nevada City, California and charged them with grand theft and criminal conspiracy. Meanwhile, the two suspects that were on probation are reportedly facing additional charges. According to California’s Penal Code, a criminal conspiracy charge alone, when connected to theft, can come with up to a year in county jail and a $10,000 fine. A grand theft misdemeanor, meanwhile, can come with another year in county jail and another $1,000 fine and a felony grand theft charge can mean up to three years in state prison.
So, don’t be afraid to get yourself a lock for all that gear you love so much and spent your hard-earned money on.
“It’s the same thing as leaving your laptop on the table at a coffee shop when you’re getting a refill. So, it’s just something that we would encourage all of our guests, and we do have locks available for purchase here at Boreal in our retail shop,” Tucker Norred, marketing director for Boreal Mountain Resort says.
