Theft at Shepard Stadium

West LA football team’s locker room gets raided at last game

Kashish Nizami

“I think their whole coaching staff and their whole team could’ve handled it better, and we could have handled it in a beter way too.”

-Bobby

West LA’s football team realized they lost more than just a game on Saturday night at approximately 10 p.m. when they returned to find their valuables missing from the visitor’s locker room at Pierce’s John Shepard Stadium.

Sometime during the second half of the football game between the two schools, the locker room was broken into and an undetermined amount of property was stolen, according to Campus Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Gary Novelich, though some players claimed to have lost large sums of cash, iPads, iPods, cell phones, and car keys. One player on the team said he lost $2000.

“At the conclusion of the game, once people from West LA College determined that their property was stolen, a [verbal altercation] occurred,” Novelich said. “I started heading up this way a couple minutes after 10 [to respond to the confrontation].”

There were 10 to 15 squad cars and a helicopter in response to the altercation and not in response to the theft, Lofrano said.

Sheriffs lined up in a barricade with batons in an effort to keep the two teams away from each other, however, according to Sheriff’s Deputy Al Guerrero additional assistance was necessary from the LAPD, Lost Hills, the Transit Services Bureau, and the College Bureau after the crowd overflowed to the parking lot.

Out of frustration, the players also damaged mats and air vents, broke windows and a fence, and wrote on walls, according to Pierce wide receiver’s coach and Assistant equipment manager Torry Hughes, Athletics Director Bob Lofrano, and Pierce head coach Efrain Martinez.

At one point a player from West LA College, defensive lineman Michael Addison, picked up a long metal rod and headed toward the crowd before a coach physically stopped him and tore it from his hands.

The opposing team’s coaches shouted and cursed at authorities and reporters on the scene, and families of the players varied in levels of shock and anger.

“That’s bull,” West LA’s head coach Marguet Miller yelled at police before turning to another coach. “They don’t want to hear nothing; let’s go.”

“Don’t talk to me ever!” he shouted at officers before grabbing another screaming coach to re-enter the locker room.