Thieves Take Trailer Carrying 2 Helicopters

The lesson is: Never leave two helicopters unattended.

Richard Wall didn’t really have much choice. He couldn’t lug the aircraft into his hotel room. So he left them outside on his flatbed trailer.

About 5:30 Tuesday evening, the Phoenix man pulled his pickup truck and trailer carrying the two small nonoperational Bell helicopters into the Harbortown Hotel parking lot at 1050 Schooner Drive.

“He was on his way to Santa Maria, but because of the weather, he didn’t want to drive all the way up there pulling the trailer,” said Ventura Police Officer Tom Higgins.

After checking in, Wall, who had been feeling ill, decided to drive up the road to pick up some medicine, Higgins said.

He pulled the homemade trailer alongside a larger truck in the parking lot near Harbor Boulevard, chained up its two axles and locked a spare trailer ball into the tongue to keep anyone from driving away with it, then set off on his errand.

When he returned, a car parked nearby prevented him from moving the trailer, so he parked his truck in another spot, went back to his room and went to bed, thinking the trailer was safe.

About 5:45 Wednesday morning, Wall went out to the parking lot and discovered that his trailer and the two partly disassembled helicopters, each valued at $185,000, were gone. His chains, trailer ball and padlocks were found hidden in some nearby ice plant, Higgins said.

Higgins said the helicopters were under a tarp to keep them dry.

“I don’t know if the people thought he had something else under there or looked under the tarp,” he said.

Whatever the reason, the thieves may be hard pressed to find a use for two choppers that can’t get off the ground.

“Those helicopters were not flyable,” said Wall’s wife, Mary Jo, reached at the couple’s Phoenix home.

“He [Wall] was going to see a person by the name of Dan Bass at Strictly Helicopters in Santa Maria,” she said. “Dan was going to put them together for him--he’s a helicopter mechanic.”

Neither Bass nor Wall could be reached for comment. The Harbortown Hotel’s general manager declined to be interviewed.

Higgins said he tried to contact Wall at the hotel, but he had already checked out and left the area. He added that Wall was upset over the theft and told him neither helicopter was insured.

“I guess he’s just going to have to eat them,” he said.