Part of my job as police reporter for the SJ-R is to thumb through media copies of police reports each day, looking for serious and unusual crime. In July 2006 I found a theft report where the stolen item was a backyard swimming pool. I did a little investigating and learned the victim was a 9-year-old boy who’d saved up his money for months to buy that pool for him and his siblings to play in.

The story ran on a Saturday. I checked my work messages from home that morning, hoping that someone in town would want to help Marcus Fearson out by finding him a new pool. There were dozens of messages by day’s end. One man went to the store promptly at 9 a.m. and brought a brand new pool for Marcus and had already dropped it off.

The police, by the way, nabbed the thief three days later.

Nine months of saving thwarted / Thieves steal pool from 9-year-old
July 15, 2006

Nine-year-old Marcus Fearson saved his allowance for months to buy himself something special.

At first he had his eye on a video game system but, after talking it over with his mom, decided a swimming pool would be just the ticket – a little indulgence to help him, his brothers and his cousins wile away steamy summer afternoons.

So on July 3, Marcus and his mother, Tiffany Fearson, went to Kmart and bought a $120 metal-frame pool. It was blue, 12 feet wide and 30 inches deep and came with its own filter pump. Marcus paid for half, and his mother put in the other half, even though she is going through bankruptcy proceedings.

“That poor kid,” Tiffany Fearson said. “he saved a while for that money. He doesn’t get much of an allowance right now.”

Marcus, who has mild autism, and his two brothers, McCory and Mekhi, even got new swim gear to wear in the pool.

Now, the only evidence there ever was a pool at the Fearson home is a vague, 12-foot-wide circular imprint in the back yard. The pool wasn’t there even long enough for the grass to turn brown underneath.

Someone dismantled and stole the pool overnight Wednesday, apparently hauling it out through the privacy fence gate in the alley behind the home, which is in the 1200 block of East Capitol Avenue.

“He knows about saving money and getting what he wants,” Tiffany Fearson said Friday. “I matched him on it, and I feel terrible that it was stolen. He liked to maintain the pool. He used to help us clean it. I thought it was great he was learning some responsibility.”

Marcus said he liked splashing in the pool and misses it.

“It was fun swimming in it,” said Marcus, who will be in the fourth grade at Owen Marsh Elementary School this fall.

Two days before the pool was taken, someone stole the ladder off it. To add insult to injury, the thieves who took the pool didn’t even take all the parts necessary to rebuild it. They left behind one of the T-shaped parts that locks the frame in place.

“You’ve got to be a pretty low life to steal a kid’s pool,” said Marcus’ grandmother, Mary Fearson.

The family has lived in its home for two years.

Last year, the Fearsons’ inflatable pool twice was the victim of thieves and vandals. They got it back the first time, but someone later slashed it, rendering it useless.

That’s why they opted for a metal-frame pool this time, assuming that no one would be able to destroy it or take it.

“When the pool was stolen last year, the kids cried. They didn’t even cry this time, they’ve gotten so used to it,” Tiffany Fearson said. “It would have been a nice thing for them to jump into today, that’s for sure.”