WV high school show choir truck & trailer stolen in NYC

[CoolBreeze]

WV high school show choir truck & trailer stolen in NYC. Cops find it and want $2,400. Part of their "To serve and protect" fee

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Thieves apparently stole a truck and trailer belonging to a chaperone of the Poca High School show choir last weekend while the group was in New York City, Putnam school officials said Tuesday.

The choir traveled to New York to compete in a national show choir competition. Thieves stole their truck and trailer from a parking lot where the group was told to park, said Putnam Schools Assistant Superintendent Cindy Daniel.

It's not clear how the thieves broke into the truck, Daniel said. The choir was waiting to perform while the truck and trailer were being stolen, she said. School officials were not sure how much equipment the group lost.

The choir's director, Joseph Kincaid, could be reached only by email. Poca High School Principal Vic Donalson did not return repeated phone calls.

Kincaid wrote Tuesday that New York police told him they had found the truck and trailer and that they were impounded. The city is charging him $2,400 to get the vehicles out of impound, he said.

He left for New York Tuesday evening, and said police will not give him any additional information until he arrives. The police also did not tell Kincaid what condition the truck and trailer where in when they were found.

More....
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201104120891

[Tom Taggart]

Have the state police find some guy in an expensive car on I-77. Pull him over--call the Governor of NY & tell him the price for his release is $2,400....

[genlock]

Maybe he parked it in the wrong place, someone did a private tow and
the ransom for the episode is $2, 400. NYC is nasty.

[lastone]

NYC is nasty.

Worth repeating.

Not long ago my sister's womens club visited there. One raped, two mugged....and that was just in the hotel !!

[AmpedNow]

Has this made the news in NY? This seems like one of those sob stories the media usually loves to report.

I visited NY several times during the Giuliani era, and it was an awesome place. The streets were clean, and people actually spoke back to you if you talked to them. I didn't feel the need to look over my shoulder all the time, even at night.

Now it's become a money hungry, communist nanny state full of unemployment and despair with skyrocketing crime. Cigarettes cost $12 a pack yet you can't smoke them anywhere. Even salt shakers sitting on restaurant tables is illegal. Everywhere you look, there are government goons looking to shake the loose change out of your pockets, even though money doesn't last long because everything is so insanely expensive.

They better go ahead and cough it up, because they won't get any sympathy from the city government.

Oh, watch out for portable No Parking signs next time.

[CoolBreeze]

The plot thickens. More highlights:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- An organizer of a choir competition in New York City last weekend, which members of the Poca High School Show Choir attended, alleged Thursday that his business partner embezzled more than $100,000 from an account that was supposed to pay for the event.

Antwon Chavis, 28, who lives in New York and choreographs high school show choir routines, said that his business partner, Byron Savree, stole money that was supposed to pay for dinners, hotel rooms, and Broadway theater tickets to show choir performers from across the country who traveled to New York for the competition.

Savree and other employees handled the financial and organizational side of the business from Savree's home in Akron, Ohio, Chavis said, while he kept his regular job as a high school choreographer.

50 Poca show choir students and chaperones walked 14 blocks through seedy parts of Manhattan to get to their performances. "You can be perfectly safe on one block and cross the street and be in danger across the street," he said. "That's how quickly conditions can change."

(There's something about a "Show Choir" walking through a seedy part of town that strikes me funny as hell... I'm thinking a South Park episode possibility)

The organizers told the schools to park in a Wal-Mart parking lot six miles away in New Jersey, Kincaid said. One of the "Finale" representatives drove the Poca group's truck and trailer to the lot and parked the vehicles himself, Kincaid said.

A Wal-Mart employee told Kincaid that the parking lot was a community lot, and that they would never call to have a vehicle towed away, Kincaid said. The chaperones called the police, who told them that the vehicle was probably stolen and wrote a report on the incident, Kincaid said.

Police eventually found the truck and trailer in a city impound lot. The towing company charged the group $2,600 to get the vehicles out of impound, Kincaid said.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201104141294