Snowboarders Face Misdemeanor Trial

GLENDALE â€”  Two snowboarders who set off a massive search when they became lost for more than 24 hours “had a map and they knew what they were doing,â€� the prosecutor argued Thursday as their trial opened on charges of going outside the bounds of the Snow Crest ski resort.

“They were snowboarding out of bounds all day and they got lost,� said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie Felker. “That’s a crime, to knowingly snowboard out of bounds.�

The snowboarders, Claudio Maluje, 28, of North Hollywood, and Patrick Jenks, 24, of Glendale, each face one charge in Municipal Court of knowingly skiing out of bounds in February in an area with posted signs warning skiers and snowboarders of legal boundaries. The charge is a misdemeanor; if convicted, Maluje and Jenks would face fines of a few hundred dollars and possibly be put on probation.

If the pair are convicted, Felker said, the county will also seek repayment of the $23,000 cost of the rescue effort, which involved some 65 volunteers and law enforcement officers as well as a county helicopter. They became lost Feb. 21 and were found the next day.

“We’re prosecuting them to send a message hopefully to others to keep them from doing this,� Felker said, noting that he had not heard of prior efforts by the county to recoup rescue costs.

But Felker denied that recovering the money was his reason for prosecuting the case.

However, with court costs averaging $3,200 to $4,000 per day, according to the state Administrative Office of the Courts, the trial--expected to take four days--may well end up costing the county half as much as the rescue effort.

“They didn’t know they were out of bounds until they were lost,� said Craig Wormley, Maluje’s private defense attorney. Terri Foster, Jenks’ public defender, argued that the pair couldn’t see boundary signs on the foggy Saturday in February when they got lost.

“They said that we were out of bounds, that we knew we were, but they wanted to settle this out of court,� Maluje said. He said the county’s final offer was for the snowboarders to repay $300. “But we turned them down, just like we turned down the $15,000 offer and the $7,500 offer. We didn’t commit any crimes. We just got lost.�

Felker said he had offered to settle the case but declined to discuss the specific offers he made to Jenks and Maluje.

The case was widely reported in February largely because of earlier, high-profile tragedies that had unfolded on mountain slopes during the previous weeks.