A trailer full of camping gear belonging to a Billings Boy Scout troop was reported to have been stolen from a West End church parking lot.
The theft was reported Monday by Scoutmaster Rick Lindholm, who said the trailer was stolen from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints parking lot at 2929 Belvedere Drive, just off Grand Avenue and 30th Street West.
The trailer contained wall tents, propane heaters, gas lanterns, camp chairs, water coolers and a homemade camp stove, among other gear, all of it belonging to Scout Troop 373. An American flag and a Troop 373 flag were also stolen.
“Everybody was really disappointed that somebody would be so brazen to steal it out of our church parking lot,” Lindholm said.
Although he reported the theft to the Billings Police Department on Monday, Lindholm said the crime probably happened on Jan. 13, the last time anyone remembered seeing the trailer.
They were going to move to the trailer to accommodate some snow plowing at the church parking lot, Lindholm said, but the trailer was not where it was normally parked. Nobody was alarmed at first, thinking perhaps somebody associated with the troop moved it off-site for some reason.
“We wanted to make sure none of our people borrowed it,” he said. “We wanted to make sure it wasn’t stolen.” By Monday, they were sure there had been a theft.
Lindholm said the trailer was locked and it had a trailer hitch lock, which must have been smashed off in order to hook up the trailer and drive off with it. The Pacam single-axle cargo trailer is white, about 10 by 6 feet, and had been owned by the troop since 2008. It had no side door and its license number is TRP 373 or T 373.
“I wouldn’t even be able to estimate the value of it,” he said. “If I was to ballpark it, maybe $6,000 or $7,000 worth of stuff, not including the trailer.”
He said the person he talked to at the Police Department’s Crime Prevention Center told him that in all likelihood they would get the trailer back eventually, but not the camping gear. He also posted notices of the theft on several Billings-area Facebook pages that deal with used merchandise.
“If we could get some help from people in the community just to be on the lookout for it,” Lindholm said, that would help. In particular, he said, people should watch for someone trying to unload a large wall tent.
“That’s going to be the ticket to getting that stuff back is the wall tents,” he said. “You don’t see big wall tents like that too often.”
Here’s a complete list of the trailer’s contents, provided by Lindholm:
1 large Montana Canvas wall tent, 10-by-20 feet
1 medium Montana Canvas wall tent, roughly 8-by-15 feet
4 Cabella’s Alaskan Guide four-person tents with boxes
10 green camping chairs
3 Coleman gas lanterns
4 propane cylinders, each labeled “373”
3 large gas camping stoves
2 Buddy propane heaters
1 Coleman popup canopy
1 large homemade camp stove with stove pipes
Lots of tarps
Water coolers
Hand saw
Axe
Fire barrel
Flags (American and Troop 373)
