Tag: dumb criminals

An armed robbery this week at a South Carolina convenience store apparently wasn’t as “armed” as the clerk thought. CNN reports on the Tuesday incident at a Kwik Stop in the small town of Sharon, where a man donning a hoodie, wig, and mask entered the store around 5:45pm, per a release from the York County Sheriff’s Office. According to authorities, the suspect pointed to the gun in his waistband and ordered the clerk to hand over whatever cash was in the register—about $300.

Not quite. Law & Crime notes that in South Carolina, even “the mere representation of possessing a deadly weapon that a witness reasonably believed to be a real gun is enough” to hit someone with those charges. Per the sheriff’s office, Dalesandro—who was charged with armed robbery with a deadly weapon, petty larceny of less than $2,000, and “wearing masks and the like”—is being held without bond in the York County Detention Center. (Read more weird crimes stories.)

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Two men charged with drug trafficking could have done a better job hiding their wares than using a package labeled “Bag Full of Drugs,” Florida authorities say. Ian Simmons and Joshua Reinhardt, both 34, were pulled over in Santa Rosa County on Saturday after a trooper clocked them going 95mph on Interstate 10 in the state’s Panhandle, according to a Florida Highway Patrol arrest report. The trooper determined that Reinhardt was the subject of an active felony warrant for violation of probation. He requested backup. A Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s deputy arrived to assist, and a K-9 alerted them to the presence of contraband in the vehicle, the arrest report said.

Two apparent would-be thieves probably thought they had the perfect plan—one would run into their local Kohl’s, grab a bunch of merch, and run back out to the parking lot, where the second guy would be waiting with the getaway car. What the suspects likely didn’t count on was their getaway car’s battery dying. Clackamas County deputies say they responded to a call about an alleged theft at the Clackamas Promenade around 3:30pm Monday, and when they got there, they say they found the hood of said car up, and Raymond Stavig and Derek Shurts trying to get a jump from bystanders, per KOIN and KPTV. Found inside the car, among other items, per authorities: phones, laptops, clothing from other stores, stolen credit cards and a credit card reader, drugs, and counterfeit cash.

An Australian man ordered to spend the night in a quarantine hotel made a temporary escape early Tuesday down a rope made from bed sheets, which he dangled from his fourth-floor window, police said. The 39-year-old had arrived in Perth, Western Australia, from the Queensland capital of Brisbane on a Monday flight but was denied entry due to restrictions related to COVID-19 and the spread of the delta variant, per CNN. He was sent to a quarantine hotel and told to leave the region within 48 hours. Instead, “he climbed out a window of the fourth floor room using a rope made of bed sheets and fled the area” just before 1am Tuesday, police said in a Facebook post, sharing a photo of the tied-together bed sheets reaching all the way to the ground.

Guards usually don’t have to watch for people breaking into a jail, so it’s maybe only a little surprising that they didn’t notice the man climbing over two fences then scrambling up to a second floor door. An alarm went off in the Maple Street Correctional Center in Redwood City, CA, and a correctional officer went to check it out, SFGate reports. The source of the ruckus was Moises Dona Robles, 35, who was more than a little confused and under the influence of meth and alcohol.

A Cairo-area reporter had his phone grabbed from his hands by a thief on a motorbike, but it wasn’t exactly the perfect crime—the reporter had been livestreaming a broadcast at the time, and the thief’s face was seen by millions. The Youm7 news site says its reporter, Mahmoud Ragheb, was on a bridge in the city of Shubra Al-Khaimah when his phone was taken, the BBC reports. Ragheb had been reporting on the aftermath of an earthquake when viewers suddenly saw the face of the thief, who was smoking a cigarette and looking back nervously as he sped away from the scene. The phone’s camera was pointing toward the man during the getaway and it wasn’t switched off until minutes later.

Police in Delaware say a man who robbed a Wilmington bank on Saturday didn’t keep the cash for long—after fleeing the Wells Fargo branch, he paused to make a deposit in the ATM outside. Police say McRoberts Williams, a 44-year-old California resident, handed a note to a teller Saturday morning saying a robbery was taking place, WBZ reports. The 25-year-old woman gave him an undisclosed amount of cash.

The California Highway Patrol chased a stolen party bus across southern California Tuesday before it slammed into a sedan north of Los Angeles. Top Dog Limo Bus owner Susie Leitzke tells KTLA that the 40-foot vehicle was stolen in San Diego Tuesday morning when a person jumped in while the driver was doing a pickup. She says local cops searched for it until around 90 minutes later, when she received a call from somebody on the 405 Freeway who complained that somebody in one of the company’s vehicles was “driving crazy on the freeway and doing 90mph.”