Trail Alert

[DownYonder]

Please remove if this has already been discussed

TRAIL ALERT. Two males were reported by Gooder Grove Hostel in Franklin NC as having attacked, beat, and robbed a female hiker of money and gear who is now recovering. They were last spotted in Franklin on 5/12/2020 and reported to be hiking north towards the NOC. The white male's trail name is Trash Panda. The black male's trail name is King ****. They are reportedly armed with knives, machete, and possibly fire arms. If seen please report to authorities and the ATC.

Link to their pictures
https://www.facebook.com/Appalachianhikernet/photos/a.335650087272883/676482813189607/?type=3&theater

[peakbagger]

It would improve this post if you indicated that the LEOs and the ATC have been notified preferably with some corroborative information like a link to a local news source to establish its legitimacy.

Interesting that the Gooder Grove Hostel would not have posted any information about this on their public Facebook account. Their last post was April 11th

[Majortrauma]

Good point. A quick search on the www using frankiln, gooder grove, hikers turns up nothing. Not saying it didn't happen but....

[ldsailor]

I saw this report on Facebook, too. The authenticity of the report was questioned until one of the FB posters who questioned it called Gooder Grove and they confirmed the incident. Still, I find it strange that there are no news reports about it as pointed out by Majortrauma. I did not do a search for news reports myself.

[swjohnsey]

I don't find it strange at all.

[Alligator]

I just checked the RSS feed and nothing has been picked up there. News articles are slow over the weekend.

[DownYonder]

From 3 days ago.
Colin Zen Gooder The police are handling the financial crime but I’m just helping to locate and report them so the USFS law officers can question or detain them regarding the assault, which is a different jurisdiction than the police. If not for me helping to go through jurisdictional juggling by the authorities, none of the agencies were going to follow up on it. So I’m just helping with communication since it’s often difficult to get in touch with the USFS officers.

Also,this was not random. The 3 were traveling together....per Colin Zen Gooder's post

[ramdino]

The victim was beaten and robbed of equipment and credit cards. The cards were used in Franklin which is a financial crime and being handled by the local LEO in Franklin. Stolen credit cards being used are hardly worthy of a news story. The assault occurred on the trail in the National Forest which is under federal jurisdiction. Federal blotter reports may not be as accessible to local news media and would not be included in the typical police blotter report that the local media receives each day. So it does not surprise me that the real story has not been published yet. At this point, if the two have not been found, no charges have been brought because they don.t have anyone to charge so no booking report for the media to pick up on. Just because something is not in the media does not mean it didn't happen nor does something appearing in media mean it happened, because we always no how often the media gets it correct.