Mammoth Mountain site of sting operation; alleged snowboard thieves nabbed

The Grinch has been collared and charged with stealing snowboards at the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area in the Eastern Sierra.

More specifically, Jeffrey Key and Riley Russo, both 18, and an unnamed 17-year-old have been busted by Mammoth police for their alleged actions in a string of snowboard thefts during the holiday period.

All three are from Laguna Niguel.

Police reportedly used a decoy snowboard to nab the suspects near Little Eagle Lodge. According to the Sierra Wave website (check out the two mug shots), the suspects grabbed the decoy and were followed to a nearby hotel.

Police recovered seven stolen snowboards. Russo and Key were taken to the Mono County Jail and the third suspect was transported to juvenile hall in Inyo County.

Not a happy holiday story, but Outposts thought you'd want to know.

-- Pete Thomas

Photo: Snowboarders enjoy a carefree afternoon at the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, which was the site of a recent stakeout that nabbed three suspected snowboard thieves. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Edmund]

Great. I hate people that steal. Especially snowboards. That's just horrible that you are at the mountain and you leave your board for a sec. for restroom or food and you come back and it gone. Hope they have sting ops at MTHIGH and Bear.

[Mel C. Thompson]

I live in Concord, California, and here, at our BART train station, bike thieves literally rule 100%. It's a massive commuter station. Police claim they're trying, but it's so obvious how to catch them, that I know the effort is perfunctory and just for PR. The reason I know this is because the bike racks are stolen from IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. Hundreds and hundreds of people need to use those racks, but now you only see a bike or two at them because, literally, if you park your bike there, even with a lock, IT FOR SURE WILL BE DISMANTLED. So, you know, according to my calculations, you'd have about two weeks, given the theft rate before everyone stopped using the racks, before you lost your $500 investment. I would come off the escalator from the train and see folks weeping next to their torn apart bikes, waiting for the BART police to come. In LA they have very well staffed transit police. In the Bay Area here, when you see a BART cop you're like, "Oh! Yeah! Right! I forgot, they still have some of those guys!" So I'm glad they caught those people who were stealing the snowboards. In the meantime, I have to walk, sometimes several miles a day, home at midnight in Winter because I can't park my bike at BART. (The fact that corruption has so deeply infiltrated BART is a part of the problem. The skimming from BART budgets has reached such proportions that there's no money to clean the restrooms. They actually closed them over the claim that they were afraid terrorists would use them. And so there's no money to maintain our transit system. They raise the prices constantly, but it all goes to into complex rerouting of the funds in such a way that virtually none of it really improves service, and so now there's very few BART police to protect our bikes or our trains.)

[tango]

what douche bags. I hope they beat them with the snow board they stole. oh...are the cops gonna return the board to the rightful owner or are they carving it up at mamoth?

[Lauren Traub Teton]

Leaving your board unlocked might be a nice old school tradition, but face it, it's like leaving the keys in your car ignition and the window open.
Lock your board or keep it by your side at all times.
And register it on www.SnowboardRegistry.com so you can find your serial number and board description easily at a resort if your board disappears.
Lauren
Editor

[Ryan]

This is aweful. Espically because the first mentioned...Jeffrey Key works with me. And i was wondering why he hadnt been at work, what a way to find out.

[Zeitgiest]

What do you think about the sting operation's that happened this Friday?

[Mike Hawk]

These boys are stains on the underpants of society