Boy Scout trailer with thousands of dollars of equipment stolen from church parking lot
MINNEAPOLIS -- For years, Boy Scout Troop 38 has kept their trailer parked in the parking lot of the Bethel Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis.
"We hear about the carjackings and everything else but we didn't… I mean it's been sitting here for three years and hasn't had an issue so we kinda hoped that we would be alright with it, you know," scoutmaster Jason Ottum said.
The scoutmaster tells WCCO sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning, thieves came to the church's parking lot and detached the trailer from the fence it was secured to, leaving behind no trail of the trailer.
"They defeated all three of the main locks and someone took off with our trailer," Ottum said. "They did come prepared and that's our logo is to be prepared. And we're trying to prepare the scouts in another way. We're trying to work at leadership and citizenship in the community and the society."
One of the trailer's locks was found about 15 blocks away from the parking lot, but other than that, there's been no sign of the trailer or its contents.
"We use the trailer to haul most of our gear. What we had stored in it is we had some of our camp stoves. Some of our three-burner propane stoves in there -- we had two of those in there. Several folding tables, our water jugs and some of our coolers," Ottum said.
Combined, the troop estimates the cost is around $10,000, including the trailer.
The troop's leader hopes it can at least be a teaching moment.
"We give them a lot of leadership skills and a lot of other techniques to use to get through adversity in other ways and this is just another example of that," Ottum said.
The troop says they have several fundraising events coming up. They plan to meet on Monday to decide if they will start a GoFundMe or add more fundraising events to replace what was stolen.