Deputies have young suspects in custody on log equipment damage

A LOGGING equipment skidder is driven over an embankment after a wild joyride. Some suspects are in custody in an ongoing investigation by the sheriff's office.

Most of the young men who twice stole logging equipment and went on a rampage of destruction have been apprehended, according to Stacey Chambers, captain of investigations for the Jasper Sheriff's Office.

On Nov. 13 the men stole a $250,000 skidder from a logging site, took it on a joy ride and tore up property as they went.

"After going mudding, they ran it off a cliff and stood it on end," Chambers said, "and then shot it up with a rifle."

After doing $60,000 in damages to the skidder, they came back the following weekend and stole two large bulldozers, rammed a loader and destroyed the engine on it.

Chambers said they drowned one dozer in a slough, and ran the other over a camp trailer and flattened it.

The sheriff's department is interviewing five suspects and has some confessions, but no one has been officially charged yet. "There is one still to be questioned," Chambers said, but by Wednesday he expects to have some arrests.

There was no grudge against the logging company. "It was just a bunch of guys in their early twenties, drinking and playing," Chambers said.