South Sierrita Mountain Road March 24, 9:27 p.m.
An intoxicated man held himself together just enough to almost buy more alcohol at a convenience store—until anger disturbed his tenuous self-composure, and he experienced both a figurative and a literal collapse, according to a Pima County Sheriff's Department report.
A sheriff's deputy responded to a gas-station convenience store near Three Points, whose cashier told him that, earlier that evening, a 30-something man in a baseball cap and camouflage pants had entered the store, retrieved a can of beer from the cooler and come up to the counter to pay for it, acting relatively normal ... other than the fact that he was "fidgeting a lot, and she could not tell exactly what was going on with him."
She said that after she rang up his purchase, he spent a lot of time reaching around in his pockets, unable to find any money—which the deputy deemed "very bizarre" behavior upon seeing security-camera footage of the incident. Apparently becoming very agitated, the cashier said the man then turned around to walk back toward the beer cooler, but on the way he suddenly fell flat on his face. Seeing that "he was so impaired he could not keep his balance within the store," the reportee said she told him she wouldn't be selling him any alcohol after all—which enraged him so much that he shouted curses at her for several minutes until finally exiting the store.
He didn't calm down then, though—quite the opposite, according to another man who'd been standing outside. This man told the deputy the subject had stormed out of the store and demanded a lighter from him, and when he said he didn't have a lighter, the subject demanded a cigarette. When he wasn't given a cigarette either, he "became very irate and began swinging his arms around and yelling at the top of his lungs."
This witness said "at one point [the subject] threatened to kill him ... and he felt as though he meant it," so the man backed away toward his car in fright. Luckily, just then the cashier burst out of the store and demanded the subject leave the premises, which he did—though if anything he became even angrier, turning around and starting to scream again as he walked away from the group of people who'd by now gathered outside the store's entrance.
At the time of the report, neither the reporting deputy nor a back-up deputy called to the area could find the wrathful drunk man, though they drove around looking for him "for quite some time."
