A Spokane veteran is heartbroken after thieves stole his Side-by-Side ATV.
Mike Hutsell says this happened last Thursday, January 26th around 5:30 am. One of his neighbors saw the criminals as they were driving away with it in what was described as a grey, older model pickup.
But these thieves didn’t just take a piece of equipment. They stole his livelihood.
“I can’t get out anymore,” he says.
Hutsell is a Vietnam War veteran and suffers from a lot of things because of Agent Orange. He is on oxygen all the time for his heart issues, and he has cancer. But none of that is going to stop him from going outside.
“There’s just something about being out there that just felt natural, felt like I should be there,” he says.
So he and his wife splurged for the first time in their life and bought that SxS. It allowed him to go on trails again and be out in the woods.
Now that the SxS is gone, “I miss it,” he says.
He also attached a plow to the front of it so he could clear snow from his own house and help his neighbors clear their driveways.
Hutsell just wants to get it back so he can be outside again, helping others and doing what he loves.
This happened in the area of Government Way and West 6th Avenue. A friend of Hutsell’s walked around the area after the crime and found footprints coming off the railroad tracks, and a glove that looks like it was left behind.
Hutsell did report this police, and if you know anything, give Crime Check a call at (509) 456-2233.
(story and photo: Katie Chen, KHQ.com)