Skell Of The Week: The Guy Who Used A Blowtorch To Steal From Walgreens
NY Post - Crime is really heating up at this New York City store.
A shoplifter found a creative way to get past those pesky plastic security cases locking seemingly every product sold in Big Apple drug stores — by brazenly setting them ablaze, wild video shows.
The burglar fired off a blowtorch to melt the plastic of the locked cases inside a Queens Walgreens Friday before grabbing several boxes and shoving them into his bag, according to footage making the rounds on social media.
The alleged thief stole about $448 worth of skin care products from the East Elmhurst store, located at 93-12 Astoria Blvd., as other shoppers and employees stood by silently filming the wild act on their phones, according to cops and the video.
The man, who wore a surgical mask and his hoodie over his head, calmly and causally lit the enclosed case on fire in the middle-of-the-day heist at about 2:35 p.m.
What a scene. Just when I thought I had seen everything on the internet, we got a guy in broad daylight taking a blowtorch to skin care products aisle in Walgreens.
(Shoutout to my like 8 year old self who during a rewatch figured out how bad this editing was that Joe Pesci's stunt double grows about 8 inches and loses 25 lbs. when they open the door and show you the outside. I've never been overly critical of film flubs but this one was so easy to spot.)
This guy is a skell on so many levels. First off, he's basically committing arson in broad daylight so let's not ignore that. The damn contraptions are on fire for a few seconds, and this wacko is putting him out with his own hands which should be sign number 57583939 that he has screws loose. Second ... skin care products? Really? Of all the things you go to steal you go take skin care products? Does this guy have bad acne that he's too afraid to admit? Does he have some illegal resale business we don't know about?
I don't understand why Walgreens locks up all the stuff they do, or pharmacies, or stores in general. I worked at Target when I was 19 for two summers. We had a two inch pocket knife switchblade for camping locked up, but a row below they had a mini axe just sitting on a shelf. Made zero sense to me. Walgreens locks up too much stuff. I'm in a rush for a weekend away at a wedding, I think it's a little excessive to have to ask to open up the deodorants and hair gels and I make a face that they are locked up, but I never though to take a blowtorch to the aisle. Yet this maniac did. What a skell. Absolutely insane. Every day in NYC gets weirder and weirder.