FROM CLALLAM COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE:
PORT ANGELES — On Friday at about 8:05 a.m., three Clallam County Courthouse employees were arriving to work when their attention was drawn to two males loitering around Clallam County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Vehicles parked in the courthouse parking lot.
The employees observed the two males in the act of siphoning gas from one of the Search and Rescue’s marked vehicles, a green Chevrolet Suburban.
The employees quickly alerted a uniformed sheriff’s support staff employee who summonsed deputies from the sheriff’s squad room in the courthouse.
As deputies approached the suspects, one of the men, later identified as 30-year-old Port Angeles transient Cory Stokes, fled on foot northbound into the wooded area between the courthouse parking lot and Peabody Creek RV Park.
Deputies quickly established containment around the wooded area with the assistance of the Port Angeles Police Department and Lower Elwha Tribal Police.
The second suspect, identified as 39-year-old Tyson Reynolds of Port Angeles, was located in a green Ford Expedition parked next to a Search and Rescue vehicle at the scene. Deputies determined the Expedition was registered to Reynolds.
At approximately 8:20 a.m., Stokes was apprehended by deputies near the tree line in the Peabody Creek RV Park.
Deputies discovered a gas siphoning hose and 5 gallon gas can in the parking lot next to the opened gas cap of the sheriff’s Search and Rescue suburban. Investigators determined that approximately one quarter tank of gas had been siphoned from the Suburban.
The Clallam sheriff’s Search and Rescue is a volunteer division that responds to emergent urban and wilderness search and rescue missions in a moment’s notice 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Both Stokes and Reynold’s alleged conduct creates a substantial risk of the interruption and impairment of services to the citizens and visitors of Clallam County.
Tampering with the public’s emergency response vehicles, like those of Search and Rescue, hinders the unit’s ability to respond to emergent missions in the county and abroad.
Stokes and Reynolds were arrested by deputies for malicious mischief in the second degree, a class C felony, and booked into the Clallam County Jail.
The case is being referred to the county Prosecutor’s Office for a formal charging decision.
