Coast Guard personnel carry a swimmer from a rescue helicopter after he was rescued when his boat capsized. Photo / AP
Coast Guard personnel carry a swimmer from a rescue helicopter after he was rescued when his boat capsized. Photo / AP
A stolen yacht. A dramatic Coast Guard rescue. A dead fish. And the famed home featured in the classic 1985 film The Goonies.
Combined, Oregon police called it a series of “really odd” events along the Pacific Northwest coast spanning 48 hours that concluded on Friday night with the arrest of a Canadian man.
Jericho Wolf Labonte, 35, of Victoria, British Columbia, was taken into custody in the northwestern Oregon resort town of Seaside, police said in a news release.
(2/4)…who launched motor life boats from STA Cape Disappointment, the air crews arrived on scene to find the vessel floundering in the surf! The surf made rescue by boat dangerous, so the aircrew decided to lower the rescue swimmer and have the owner enter the water for rescue… pic.twitter.com/z92WvzpTG9
He’d been pulled from the ocean hours earlier by a Coast Guard swimmer, just after the yacht he was piloting capsized amid high waves. He was briefly hospitalised for mild hypothermia.
Labonte was discharged before authorities in nearby Astoria, Oregon, saw the rescue video and said they recognised him as the same person who covered over security cameras at the Goonies house and left the fish on the porch.
A newly minted Coast Guard rescue swimmer saved the life of a man who was piloting the yacht. Photo / AP
Police in Seaside, about 28km south of Astoria, said they found Labonte on Friday evening at a homeless shelter where he was staying “under an alias”, and arrested him on charges of theft, criminal mischief, endangering another person and unauthorised use of a vehicle.
He’s also wanted in Canada for “other cases”, Seaside police said.
“It’s been a really odd 48 hours,” Astoria Police Chief Stacy Kelly said Friday.
A man who was saved by the Coast Guard was wanted by police over an alleged incident at the Goonies house. Photo / AP
Police had been looking for Labonte since Wednesday, when an acquaintance alerted them to a video Labonte posted on social media of himself leaving a dead fish at the Goonies house and dancing around the property, Kelly said. The Victorian home was recently sold to a fan of the film, after being listed for US$1.7 million.
Kelly didn’t know what kind of fish it was, but said police believed it was caught locally because after the video started circulating another person reported having taken Labonte fishing.
Labonte is also wanted in British Columbia on criminal harassment, mischief and failure to comply cases from last fall, Kelly said.
Early on Friday afternoon, before Labonte’s arrest, the Coast Guard shared stunning video of a rescue made a few hours earlier in which a newly minted rescue swimmer was lowered by cable from a helicopter swam to a 11-metres yacht that was struggling in heavy surf. As the swimmer approached the vessel, a large wave slammed into it, rolling the boat over and throwing a man, later identified as Labonte, into the water.
The swimmer, Petty Officer 1st Class Branch Walton, of Greenville, South Carolina, reached Labonte and pulled him to safety. The helicopter crew flew him to Coast Guard Base Astoria, where medics treated him for mild hypothermia and transported him to a hospital..
The yacht’s owner, who lives in nearby Warrenton, Oregon, reported the vessel stolen later that day.
The mouth of the Columbia, the largest North American river flowing into the Pacific Ocean, is known as “the graveyard of the Pacific” for its notoriously rough seas.
