$2 Million Worth of Nike Sneakers Have Been Stolen From Trains Over the Last Year
Last year, stolen pairs of the then-unreleased Air Jordan 11 'Legend Blue' worth more than $200,000 were recovered after allegedly being stolen from a train in California. That headline is just the tip of the iceberg of a heist syndicate targeting Nike sneakers, according to an eye-opening Los Angeles Times story connecting 10 thefts over the last year.
Ten train burglaries—not robberies because they haven't involved confrontation—have yielded nine successful hauls of valuable Nike sneakers, including nearly 2,000 pairs of the Nigel Sylvester x Air Jordan 4 'Brick by Brick' worth more than $440,000 recovered in January in Arizona.
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Police say thieves have targeted trains on the BNSF Railway, the largest freight railroad in the U.S. and one with roots that go back to 1849. Sometimes having been tipped off from collaborators at warehouses and trucking companies, and other times merely looking for containers with high-security locks, the alleged criminals slash the air brake hose to cause a train to stop. They'll then open the containers with reciprocating saws or bolt cutters and then alert a 'follow vehicle' to retrieve the stolen goods.
The aforementioned Air Jordan 11s were recovered later on from the back of a U-Haul truck. The sneakers from Sylvester's forthcoming collaboration, which releases next month, were also discovered later in a truck after tracking devices in some of the trucks helped lead police to the product.
A purported ringleader was arrested last summer, but that hasn't stopped the thefts from continuing. Police believe Felipe Arturo Avalos-Mejia had been involved in train thefts for more than 11 years. Prior to his arrest 74 cases of stolen Nikes, 108 packs of socks and 35 pairs of shoes worth about $94,659 were recovered from a location he allegedly fled.
Thefts have also occurred while trains have continued to move slowly during the changing over in tracks. Train staff are told by their employer not to confront thieves, but because trains can be so long and thefts can occur without raising any alerts that instruction often isn't necessary. The remote location of the thefts increases the amount of time it takes authorities to respond should they be notified.
'It's done fast. It's fast as lightning,' Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at CargoNet, a private company that provides supply-chain theft intelligence to law enforcement, told the Arizona Republic in a story about the Air Jordan 4 heist. 'A lot of those areas you can't get to other than with a helicopter… You can't even get to some of those rail tracks with off-road vehicles.'
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Elizabeth Smart's life was forever changed when she was abducted in the middle of the night by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. During the early morning hours of June 5, 2002, Mitchell broke into the Smart family's Salt Lake City home and snatched then-14-year-old Elizabeth from her bed. Mitchell — who claimed to be a religious prophet named Immanuel — and his wife Barzee then held the teenager captive for the next nine months, with Mitchell repeatedly raping Elizabeth while Barzee watched on. As Elizabeth endured this terrifying ordeal, her missing persons case captivated the nation and her family never lost hope that she would be rescued. 'We always knew that if Elizabeth was alive it would be a miracle,' her uncle Tom Smart told PEOPLE. 'But we always believed that the miracle was very, very possible. And sure enough, it was.' On March 12, 2003, Elizabeth and her kidnappers were spotted walking in Sandy, Utah. Despite being dressed in a disguise and giving police a fake name, Elizabeth was ultimately saved by authorities and reunited with her family — while her kidnappers were taken into custody. About a week later, Mitchell and Barzee faced charges of aggravated kidnapping, burglary and sexual assault, according to the Los Angeles Times. In the more than two decades since her abduction, Elizabeth has managed not just to survive the traumatizing experience — but thrive in spite of it. With a focus on sharing survivors' stories, Elizabeth is an accomplished author, TV correspondent, motivational speaker, philanthropist and victims' rights advocate. In her personal life, Elizabeth wed Matthew Gilmour in 2012; the couple are parents to three children together. So where are Elizabeth Smart's kidnappers, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, now? Here's everything to know about the husband-and-wife who abducted the Utah teenager and their lives today. Mitchell and Barzee first met in the mid-1980s at a group counseling session in Salt Lake City run by the Mormon church, The New Yorker reported. At the time, Mitchell's marriage to his second wife, Debbie, was falling apart amidst allegations that he had abused Debbie's two younger children from a previous marriage, according to CNN. Meanwhile, Barzee alleged in court that she was in the process of ending a 20-year abusive marriage while also losing custody of her six children, per CNN. The two were married within nine months of their first meeting, on Nov. 29, 1985 — the day Mitchell's divorce was finalized, Deseret News reported. In the following years, Mitchell worked as a die cutter at O.C. Tanner, while Barzee stayed home to practice and study the organ. Both were active members in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But by the mid-1990s, all of that changed when Mitchell quit his job and stopped paying taxes, according to CNN. The couple sold off all their possessions and began living off the land, panhandling to get by as they hitchhiked across the country. During this time, they also distanced themselves from the Mormon church and began to wear religious robes, as Mitchell had become convinced he was a prophet who was to have seven wives. Mitchell first encountered the Smart family and their Utah home in November 2001, PEOPLE previously reported. Lois Smart met Mitchell while he was panhandling on the streets of Salt Lake City. At the time, she gave him $5 and an offer to do some roofing work on the family's home — an extension of kindness that was not uncommon for Lois and her husband Ed, who were Mormons. Mitchell returned to the family's Salt Lake City home months later with sinister intentions. On the night of June 5, 2002, the self-proclaimed prophet cut a hole in the Smart's kitchen screen and entered the bedroom that Elizabeth shared with her younger sister, Mary Katherine. 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He befriended a Mormon family in El Cajon, Calif., and after learning they had a young daughter, selected her as 'his next victim,' Elizabeth wrote. One night, Mitchell left their campsite dressed in dark clothes and with a knife in hand to kidnap the young girl. However, his plan was foiled when he entered the home and was alarmed by a man snoring. The sound compelled Mitchell to leave and abandon his plans to take the young girl. 'I know most people consider snoring a health risk or an annoyance, but in the case of this young girl, it saved her life,' Elizabeth wrote. The road to rescuing Elizabeth — and catching her captors — got its first break in October 2002, when Elizabeth's sister Mary Katherine told her parents she remembered who had taken her sister. Mary Katherine revealed it was the worker she knew as 'Immanuel,' and Ed knew immediately it was the man who had worked on their roof, PEOPLE previously reported. 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