racing to the red light

File this one under “Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction”, folks.

Several weeks ago, a group of high school-aged kids in the Southern California city of La Habra Heights broke into a fully-furnished mansion whose owner had put the home on the market and was out of the country.  Somehow, these kids knew that the owner was away and took advantage, hosting what was undoubtedly a smashing renegade party inside the premises (the L.A. Times story makes it sound like the kids were outside initially).

Later in the evening, someone broke in through a window and the kids quickly ransacked and looted the place. 

Look at all this rich-guy shit!  It looks like the one wall’s worth of Thurston Howell III’s sitting parlor:

One kid nabbed a stuffed snow leopard, evidently valued at a quarter of a million dollars. He said that he took it because all the “good stuff was gone” and when confronted with the value of his theft he replied, “How many zeros is that?”  [Perhaps he should have stolen a calculator as well.  -Ed.]

They are looking into whether or not it is legal to even posses a stuffed snow leopard.  Some people were pissed.