As a boy, I always wondered why the Beagle Boys even bothered to wear a simple mask while doing their bad deeds to Donald Duck, his family and society in general. But then, maybe it didn't really matter. It seems a pair of armed robbers thought that wearing ghost masks would guard their identity. That wasn't the way it turned out. A witness saw the ghosts run out the back door of the Best Buy Cigarettes store in rural Marysville, California the day before Hallowe'en. The witness continued watching as they jumped into a two-door Mazda sports car.
Yuba County sheriff's deputies found the car, but the suspects - and their masks - were gone. However, the robbers left behind the wrappers from the masks in the abandoned car. Investigators used bar codes on the wrappers to trace the masks to a local Wal-Mart, and then found surveillance video of the men buying the masks. (Sounds like CSI:Lone Mountain to me.)
"It's a very interesting case," Detective Brandt Lowe said of the unusual chain of evidence.
Alben Bonds, 24, of Linda, was arrested Monday for the October 30 robbery, and police are looking for a 17-year-old boy they say was his accomplice. Bonds is being held at Yuba County jail in lieu of $100,000 bail on suspicion of robbery, kidnapping and burglary.
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Tackling crime is even tougher in parts of India...
Police in Patna charged a suspect after a bus driver was robbed of his fares, then realized the suspect was a 3-month old baby. The boy, Parveen Kumar, had been listed along with his father on an initial charge sheet after the bus driver was robbed, police in the eastern Indian state of Bihar said November 3rd.
The baby had been charged with robbery, extortion and banditry, said local superintendent of police Rattan Sajai. Though the robbery in the remote village of Muzzafarpur occurred Sept. 19, the fact that a prime suspect was an infant only came to light recently when police launched their investigation, Sanjai said. Police blamed the bus driver, saying he reported the baby as a conspirator because of a personal grudge he had with the father.
The charges against the baby boy have since been dropped, Sanjai said.
This reminds me of the time a feller and his pig robbed the Cat Holler First and Only Bank. They'd have gotten away with it, but the pig squealed...
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Speaking of Cat Holler...
Now that the election is over, folks have started coming outside without wearing hip boots. In fact Uncle Nud came by the other day and brought one of Cat Holler's foremost politicians with him. Cork Bobber was in a big way. He was all cranked up a-solvin' problems. He has big idees, you know. Pretty soon we may just have to come up with a whole new set of problems here in the Holler. Stay tuned...
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Big City Sam wonders why they put pictures of criminals up on the walls in Post Offices. What are we supposed to do, he asks, write to them? Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so that the mailpersons can look for them while they deliver the mail?
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Email me at kelharrell@communicomm.com and mention the column name in the subject area. To get in touch using regular mail, send it c/o Claiborne Progress, P.O. Box 40, Tazewell, TN 37879. Don't forget to look for this column and much more at our website: www.claiborneprogress.net. A stitch in time saves nine. Nine what? Stitches? Well, maybe...
Kelly Harrell is a columnist for the Claiborne Progress
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