Mother pleads for thief to return deceased son's longboard

SHELLEY – The mother of a man killed last July is pleading for the return of her son’s favorite possession: his longboard.

Tyler Hall, 21, was hit and killed by a train in Power County on July 15. The Shelley native had graduated with three associate degrees from the College of Southern Idaho and wanted to go to law school.

Tyler was passionate about longboarding and spent hours perfecting the skill. He helped start the longboarding club at CSI, and when he died, his family asked everyone at the funeral to put stickers on his casket to “tag his last ride.” Longboarders are known to cover the bottom of their boards with stickers.

“His favorite longboard was one of the very few things we have from his short 21 years on this earth,” Paige Hall, Tyler’s mother, tells EastIdahoNews.com. “I know it’s just ‘a thing,’ but it’s so much more than that to my family.”

Sometime over the past two weeks, the board was stolen was Tyler’s uncle's garage in Idaho Falls.

“It was being stored by my brother so we could make it into a very unique headstone for Tyler’s gravesite,” Hall says. “Although we could figure out the headstone without it, I’d be devastated not to have it back.”

The board was not in plain sight and nothing else was stolen from the garage, according to Hall. She believes the thief has no idea how significant the board is to her family.

“We were hoping to have the longboard part of the new headstone done by his birthday on June 2,” Hall says. “We wanted to have the entire headstone finished by July 15 – the anniversary of his death.”

The Hall family is offering a cash reward for the return of the longboard. Tyler’s father works for the Idaho Falls Fire Department and Hall says the board can be dropped off at any fire station – no questions asked.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Hall says. “We just want it back. It feels like losing Tyler all over again. Please – just bring it back.”