Imagine a story containing a heroic young man on his first mission, a thrilling rescue against all odds, and a plot twist that turns the rescued castaway into a delinquent 1980s movie fan. Reality always overwhelms the imagination.
The US Coast Guard shared a video on social media on Friday of an exciting rescue by one of its rookies at the mouth of the Columbia River, also known as "the graveyard of the Pacific." So far, everything relatively normal. What they didn't know was that the person rescued was a delinquent fan of The Goonies. wanted by the police, and that precisely the viralization of his video would facilitate his arrest. Let's go by steps.
In the video shared by the Coast Guard, you can see the feat of Petty Officer First Class Walton, from Greenville, South Carolina, who swims in the middle of a storm and manages to rescue a man who was lost aboard an 11-meter yacht. and whom a wave throws into the water.
The coast guard explains that it received an emergency signal around 10 a.m., without additional information. They managed to triangulate the point of origin of the call and it turned out that several ships and a coast guard helicopter were near the place carrying out training maneuvers. They were the first to respond.
They found the 35-foot yacht, the P/C Sandpiper, buffeted by a storm of 20- to 40-foot waves, and a man on its stern calling for help. The situation was critical.
The footage shows Walton lowered from the helicopter on a cable and jumped into the water. He swims against the current towards the boat, but when he is about to board it, a huge wave crashes violently over the boat, causing it to roll over. Despite the tumble, Walton locates the castaway and manages to bring him to safety aboard the MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter. The castaway was taken to the Coast Guard Base Astoria, where doctors treated him for mild hypothermia. The yacht was also recovered.
And here things start to get interesting. Shortly after the video was shared, it was discovered that the yacht's owner had reported its theft last Wednesday, and that a search warrant was placed on the rescued man by the police to question him about a strange incident that occurred in a house in Astoria, Oregon, who appeared in the 1985 adventure classic The Goonies.
The key to unite both cases was given by a Twitter user who, in response to the video of the rescue shared by the coast guard, added another, more bizarre one, that the castaway himself had posted on the Internet a few days before. In it you can see the aforementioned leaving dead fish at the front door of the house immortalized by the film, and dancing around the property. Apparently, it was his way of punishing the new tenants of the house, who, fed up with being bothered by nostalgic fans, had hung up signs asking to be left alone.
The man has been identified by police as Jericho Labonte, 35, of Victoria, British Columbia. And it turns out that Labonte is also wanted in those lands for different cases of criminal harassment, disorders and various breaches of the law since last fall.
