North Oracle Road
Oct. 10, 4:50 p.m.
A man might've gotten away with petty shoplifting some candy had he not randomly shouted that he was guilty of much worse and then treating a cop like a Lyft driver, according to a Pima County Sheriff's Department report.
A sheriff's deputy went to a north-side Circle K, where someone had called in about a man possibly stealing from the store. Upon exiting, the suspect yelled at the caller, "I rape children and babies!"
The officer quickly located the subject meandering down the road near the convenience store, with a large candy bar "hanging out of his pocket" and holding a Polar Pop cup full of soda—which he readily admitted to the officer he'd just stolen. He was totally cooperative with the officer as he was patted down, handcuffed and questioned.
He denied yelling at anyone at the Circle K, saying he'd just been talking to himself; asked what he'd been talking to himself about, "he said he was a baby and child molester." Asked if that were true, he said no, and asked if he thought that was "a peculiar statement," he agreed but said he didn't know why he'd made it.
When a backup officer interviewed the Circle K employees, they said none of them had called—apparently it was a random female customer who'd noticed the man casually stealing the soda and candy (plus some nachos)—and then called the cops when she heard his disturbing declaration.
The reporting officer returned the candy bar to the Circle K, whose clerks didn't wish to press charges, and was planning to cite the subject and release him. But the man wouldn't give him a residential address in Tucson, instead offhandedly requesting a lift to Mesa. (The deputy said no, he wouldn't be spending his evening taxiing the shoplifter nearly 2 hours north.)
The officer had no choice but to book the subject into jail for his candy caper.
Self-Hating Skater Deflator
North Mountain Avenue
Aug. 29, 5 p.m.
A motorized-skateboard-riding University of Arizona student was bizarrely attacked with his own board by a random man screaming a suicidal statement, a UA Police Department report stated.
The victim told a UA officer he was riding along the road on campus when an unknown man came up from behind and pushed him off his skateboard, grabbing it to hit him on the back of his head with one of its wheels.
But then, instead of further injuring the vulnerable reportee turned and slowly walked away, yelling, "Kill me now!"
Officers scoured the area surrounding the incident location but couldn't find the assailant. Anyway, the young skater "adamantly declined" to press charges against his attacker even if he were found. He suffered only minor injuries: abrasions on his arm and a bump on his head.
