After dispatch received word of a man driving along Cortaro Road in a sit-down shopping-cart scooter around 5 a.m., the MPD sent police officers to the area—a large shopping area called the Continental Ranch Business Park.
One officer went to the Walmart Supercenter there to speak with an employee who'd just reported the theft of a ride-on shopping cart. Almost immediately another officer found the missing ride-on cart—with its thief still riding on it—at a nearby McDonald's.
Upon police interview, the man on the scooter-cart simply insisted he'd "had no intentions of stealing the cart," but he did have trouble walking, and he needed the cart because "he wanted coffee and the McDonalds was the only location open."
The Walmart employee said store management didn't even want to press charges—they just wanted their scooter back.
The subject "was cooperative" and drove the cart back to the Walmart upon request. He was then free to go (with his coffee) and officers cleared the scene.
Digging Under the Influence UA Area June 21, 11:08 a.m.
A drunk landscaper working on the yard of a University of Arizona sorority house went from lewd and lazy to violent, a UA Police Department report said.Late in the morning, a whole team of UA officers were deployed to the Alpha Delta Pi house, 1443 E. Second St., where the landscape company's foreman said the employee had arrived at the site late and then acted irritable and aggressive all morning. Also, the foreman said, he'd seen several empty peppermint-schnapps bottles not well concealed inside the man's tote bag.
At one point that morning, he said, the subject simply drifted off to sleep in the shade while everyone else was hard at work. A little later he unzipped his pants and urinated in the yard right next to where other men were working, heedless of any sorority sisters who might've been nearby or looking out the window of their house.
When a coworker confronted him about his behavior, the drunk man reportedly started a verbal argument and then took a pick ax he'd been holding and waved it in the other man's face.
When the man was handcuffed and searched, police found his pockets full of things he shouldn't have had, including a baggie of marijuana and a weed bong crudely constructed from an empty beer can. They found two unopened cans of Mike's Hard Lemonade inside his bag, along with the empty schnapps bottles.
The man was arrested. ■
