Show Goes On After Deputy Spots Stolen Sea World Props In Car Trunk
When Spokane County sheriff’s Deputy Tim Downing spotted a jar of seal teeth in a burglary suspect’s car Tuesday, he thought he’d stumbled onto witchcraft.
Instead, he rescued prized props for a Sea World show that hundreds of Spokane and North Idaho schoolchildren will see this week.
The teeth and a rare coat made from northern fur seals were snatched overnight from a marine biology instructor’s rental Jeep at the Hampton Inn in southwest Spokane.
“Some of it is irreplaceable,” said Jonna Rae Bartges, spokeswoman for Sea World of California. “We’ve been doing these presentations since 1980 and we’ve never had anything like this happen. This is a first for us.”
But it’s not the coat’s first encounter with the law.
Its very existence is illegal, Bartges said. Federal authorities originally confiscated it under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it a crime to harm marine mammals or possess or sell their body parts.
Sea World borrowed it from the National Marine Fisheries Service two years ago to demonstrate the impact people can have on sea life.
The coat remained in good hands until sometime Tuesday morning. Instructor Christine Morrison noticed her most popular props missing as she headed off to the first of 13 schools she plans to visit.
She canceled her presentation and reported the crime.
A couple of hours later, Deputy Downing was cruising on Rimrock Road when he passed a man leaning over an open car trunk. Downing said he recognized $5,000 worth of surveying equipment in the trunk that had been reported missing from a construction site near the Hampton Inn.
When he searched the car, he spotted the jar containing dozens of teeth.
“I thought it was some satanic thing or something,” said Downing. “I didn’t know.”
Then he found the sleek, dark brown coat. “It didn’t belong in the back of a trunk in a ‘77 Nova,” he said.
A Sea World logo prompted Downing to call San Diego and ask if the aquarium was missing anything.
“Pretty amazing,” Morrison said, after learning the show could go on.
Steven A. Crane, 26, 1920 W. Riverside, was jailed on charges of second-degree burglary and first-degree theft.
“The idea of losing this was pretty upsetting to us,” Bartges said. “In three hours, they recovered what to us was really priceless.”
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