It has been a tough year for Valor Soccer, a youth sports program based in Maple Valley. The program has faced multiple car break-ins, vandals wrecking their playing field, and now someone stole the team’s 16,000-dollar trailer from the headquarters.
CEO Dean Aldridge describes the area as dangerous and says, “there’s a different type of lawless individual down here.”
The trailer was stolen from their property over the weekend, carrying all kinds of soccer equipment and even food bank donations inside.
“Some of our kids are impoverished,” Aldridge says, emphasizing the impact of the thefts and vandalism Valor Soccer has faced.
Aldridge calls the theft “an intrusion,” and filed a police report and posted photos of the missing tailer on social media in hopes that someone would spot it.
A tipster alerted Aldridge, and he and his father-in-law started searching. Their search led them to a house nearby in Renton.
Aldridge says he found a man, Blake Lyons, at the residence painting the trailer in his driveway. He confronted Lyons standing next to a trailer with a fresh coat of gray paint.
“It looked like there was a bunch of black bleeding through it, and our trailer is black,” Aldridge describes the confrontation to me.
He says the 32-yar-old got defensive and would not allow him to inspect the trailer. So Aldridge says he “pushed him out of the way…opened the trailer, and there’s our Valor tents.”
But when he threatened to call the authorities, Aldridge says Lyons “tried to run me over with his Silver Toyota pick-up truck and took off.”
When Sheriff’s deputies arrived, they discovered that Lyons has a lengthy criminal history with dozens of arrests on his record and nine felony convictions.
“Why are these judges letting these people out?” asks Aldridge, “and how are they still on the streets?”
Lyons, the repeat offender, is expected to appear in court next month for allegedly ramming Renton Police cruisers with his car during an attempted getaway.
To make matters worse, Aldridge found a note taped on the door of Valor Soccer headquarters threatening, “if charged get pressed on me, I’m coming after you. I promise.”
While Lyons remains on the run, there is some good news. Aldridge got his trailer back and brought it to an auto shop in Maple Valley to be restored. The crew there is doing it all for free. Aldridge says they’re now a part of his team.