Grand Theft Auto: Las Cruces
Mike Smith
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Compared to some of America’s most populated states, the possibility of having one’s car stolen is relatively small in New Mexico. Nevertheless, car thefts do occur here: in 2006, for instance, thieves drove away with a reported 2,418 different vehicles, and that was just in Albuquerque.
The latest sordid chapter in New Mexico’s book of motor vehicle thefts opens in Las Cruces, the state’s second largest city, in southern New Mexico’s Doña Ana County.
There, perhaps motivated by a basic greed for money, or by the promised thrill of speeding away in an illicit ride, or by the all-too-tempting chance to sit behind the wheel of a vehicle they could never otherwise afford, a group of thieves escaped, according to the May 15, 2008 Las Cruces Sun-News, “sometime during the evening of April 26 or early in the morning on April 27,” with not just one, but five, golf carts.
“Las Cruces police are looking for a set of sub-par criminals after five golf carts were stolen from the Las Cruces Country Club,” read the article.
Dubbed by the press (okay, just by the Sun-News) as “The Back-Nine Bandits,” the thieves stole the five white E-Z-Go carts, each emblazoned with a Las Cruces Country Club sticker, before eventually being apprehended by the city police.
Or one of them was, anyway.
Articles published on May 28 and May 30 in the Las Cruces Sun-News reported that, following a house party, John Ryan Kinkaid, 22, a neighbor of the Country Club’s, allegedly broke into the club with four friends on April 27, stole the five carts, and then, with his friends, had a great time driving the carts all over the golf course, before putting merrily down the road to Kinkaid’s house.
(Do yourself a favor, and click on that last link.)
For a time, Kinkaid stored the ill-gotten carts in his backyard. Then, he gave one away to someone who took it north to Albuquerque. Another went to Texas. Three others were hidden away in a Las Cruces storage area, removed from storage, and then abandoned in the desert, near the city’s Stern Drive.
Somehow, perhaps as a result of a $1,000 reward for any relevant information offered by the local Crime Stoppers group, the police discovered Kinkaid’s involvement and the whereabouts of the carts, and Kinkaid has since been arrested, charged with a single count of non-residential burglary, and booked into the Dona Ana County Detention Center, with an imposed bond of $10,000.
“Las Cruces police detectives are continuing an investigation, and more arrests are anticipated,” read the May 28 Sun-News article.
That, of course, comes to the great relief of the city’s wider golf-cart-owning public, but not to anyone hoping to see what comically inane crime the Back-Nine Bandits would pull next.
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Reader Comments (1)
Thank you! We must have replayed that stunt 100 times. *LOL*
(But for some strange reason - our kids guessed that it's supposed to be about a young George Bush, and Dick Cheney???)