2 Coaches Who Left Boys Won’t Be Prosecuted

After a two-week investigation, Riverside County officials have decided not to prosecute two assistant coaches who left six Orange County basketball players in a van alongside a desert highway after they had become rowdy on a trip home from a Palm Springs tournament July 18.

“The boys had been acting up in that van, and they were causing a danger to the coaches on the highway at the time,” Riverside County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Dye said Thursday. “The coaches didn’t really intend to abandon the boys but just wanted them to cool off.”

Riverside County officers had considered bringing child-endangerment charges against coaches R. Lyndon Boop, 26, and Mark Kremer, 21. The coaches left the players from Sunny Hills High in Fullerton temporarily stranded in a van at the side of Interstate 10, about 18 miles east of Banning the night of July 18. A Riverside County sheriff’s deputy found the stranded youths less than two hours later.

The players, ages 16 and 17, were taken to the sheriff’s substation in Banning. Their parents then arranged to get them home.

‘Boys Were Throwing Things’

The youths told deputies they had been abandoned partially because the coaches were mad at them for losing a tournament in Palm Springs, officers said. But later the sheriff’s deputies ascertained that the real and apparently only reason the coaches left the boys was because they were misbehaving in the trip home.

“Some of the boys were throwing things out the van, and some were making obscene gestures to other motorists,” Dye said. “Some of the other motorists were getting angry, and there could have been trouble on the highway.”

Dye said investigators verified that the coaches, less than two hours after leaving the boys, came back to the scene to take them home. “But when they got here they saw that we were taking the boys away in a black and white (sheriff’s vehicle),” Dye said. The coaches did, however, take the empty van back to the Fullerton Joint Union High School District, which owns it.

Boop and Kremer were volunteers for a private, nonprofit summer sports program supervised by Sunny Hills High head basketball coach Steve White. White said he suspended the assistants from the summer program after the incident. Neither assistant coach was paid.

White said Thursday that he’s “very pleased” Riverside County is not seeking legal action against Boop and Kremer.

“The coaches themselves said at the time that they’d made a bad judgment, but we’re going to learn from it,” White said, adding that the two assistants can apply for their normal coaching and teaching jobs this fall with the school district.

School district Supt. Robert Martin said last week that the summer basketball program is entirely private, so the school district has no responsibility for the coaches’ actions and cannot take any disciplinary action against the coaches.

The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports, also plans no disciplinary action in the case. CIF Southern Section Commissioner Stan Thomas did say last week that he was displeased and angry about the incident.