The Oceanside RCMP may well have saved the season of one local softball team after recovering $3,000 worth of stolen equipment in the Parksville area last week.
A theft was reported at the Quality Foods parking lot in Parksville at 8:52 p.m., on May 22, police said in a news release issued two days later. The local detachment got a call from a “very upset” man who said all the equipment for his softball team had been stolen from his truck.
The gear was worth over $3,000, he said, and was going to be a struggle for the team to replace. The only description that police had was that the thief was possibly associated to an older green Subaru car.
After a review of the files over the weekend, a member of the Oceanside RCMP Crime Reduction Unit believed he had dealt with a local prolific offender who may have been associated with the car described. He followed his hunch to a property well-known to police, and was able to locate the softball gear in the woods.
The bad news, said the RCMP, is that although police have a strong suspicion who the thief was, there was insufficient evidence to support an arrest. The good news is, the softball team was ecstatic when its gear was returned.
— NEWS staff and RCMP release