BOTHELL, Wash. — The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office continues to search for seven guitars after they were stolen from a storage facility in Bothell in February.
Tyler Campbell, the owner of those guitars, says five of which were eight-string guitars and the other two were bass guitars. He says the guitars are customized to fit the genre he plays, which is death doom metal.
“These were very specific instruments that I’ve spent the last two decades catering to the music that I make,” Campbell said.
Campbell says not only was he moving when the theft happened, but he was set to tour with his band, too.
“On top of the emotional and financial distress of where are my guitars, I had shows that were booked,” Campbell said.
He shared security video of the theft at his storage unit at a Trojan Storage in Bothell. In the video, two thieves are spotted with carts hauling his guitars out. He says combined, the seven guitars are worth around $13,000; however, he says when he filed an insurance claim for theft, he only received $2,000 in damages.
“I fought it. I did my best to put my foot down and said this isn’t acceptable. This doesn’t solve anything,” Campbell said.
A few weeks after the theft in late February, Campbell says he was able to track one of the guitars through an AirTag he placed in it and followed it to an apartment building in Everett. He says he reached out to Everett Police about it and met up with him to confront the potential thieves.
“We knocked on the door. Spoke with someone who was uncooperative, not willing to help,” Campbell said. “And then I got a shrug from police saying I guess we have to come back with a warrant which never happened,” he continued.
Although he did purchase a replacement guitar, Campbell is out thousands. With that said, he says his bandmates and musicians within the death doom metal scene have shown huge support.
“As unpleasant the whole thing was, there was a silver lining. I was able to kind of see that there are good people,” Campbell said.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help Campbell purchase new instruments.
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