What were they thinking!?

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Do you remember the tv show called World’s Dumbest Criminals? This story could play on that show. Let me set the stage for you. My husband is the manager of a convenience store. Despite that they are all trained to keep less than $20 in the cash drawer at all times, these stores are robbed quite often in various ways. People used to get gas and drive off without paying until the company began making customers pay first. A common type of theft is called a ‘beer run’. A customer will come in, wait until the cashier is swamped with customers, get a 12-pack of beer out of the cooler and then just walk out with it. Amazing. Those types of things are something I would never consider and had never even thought about before.

Alright, back to the story. Our area had a full day of snow on Sunday. The entire city is covered in snow and ice, streets as well. Three men, a little before 3 a.m. get a wild idea to go rob the nearest convenience store. They needed cigarettes. They took a baseball bat with them and walked through the snow to the store (leaving tracks). They break in and steal several cartons of cigarettes and then turn around and walk back home (leaving tracks in the snow).  We get a phone call a couple of minutes before 3a.m. from the answering service. They told hubby what had happened and that he needed to go to the store to meet with the police. By the time he got there, the police, with dogs, had followed the tracks and their scent from the store back to the suspects house and arrested 3 men and retrieved all the cigarettes worth $650. Hubby got his cigarettes back from probably the quickest followup and arrest in history! I wonder if they were surprised? I’m really stunned at their logic. What were they thinking?!

P.S. The suspects were found to be minors and one was the son of a local gang leader.