California prosecutors arraigned the Sausalito city manager on felony burglary charges on Tuesday after she was accused of trying to steal a yacht from a local marina over the weekend.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office said deputies took Elaine Forbes, 53, into custody on Saturday after she seemed to try to start one of the boats “by manipulating levers and switches in an attempt to steal the boat.”
The captain of the 66-foot yacht, Bill Aubrey, said he called the police after confronting Ms. Forbes aboard the vessel.
“She had the horn going, the windshield wipers going, the spotlight going,” Mr. Aubrey told San Francisco’s KGO-TV.
The boat’s owner, Andy Cunningham, told the station that he witnessed “unbelievable chaos” aboard the ship after it was apparently ransacked.
“She took all my clothes and tried them on. They were inside out,” Mr. Cunningham said. “There was a jar of maraschino cherries she dumped into a shoebox. She had drunk a lot of alcohol, four bottles of our wine.”
The Sausalito City Council approved a leave of absence for Ms. Forbes on Thursday, just three weeks after she took the job. By the next day, the sheriff’s office said a missing persons report was filed on her behalf.
“This is a difficult development for our City staff and our community,” the City of Sausalito, which is just north of San Francisco, said in a statement. “Because this is now an active and ongoing investigation by the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, the City will not comment on the specific allegations.”
A spokesperson for Ms. Forbes’ family said the suspect was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the incident.
“As the facts become clearer and Elaine obtains legal and healthcare counsel in the coming hours and days, we hope people will respond with compassion, patience and respect for her and her family during an extraordinarily difficult time,” the spokesperson said.
The family added that Ms. Forbes lives on a boat, so she may have been confused about which vessel she was boarding.
Ms. Forbes worked at the Port of San Francisco for nine years before joining the City of Sausalito.
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