One last drink

Last requests aren’t common during arrests, but that didn’t stop one Circle K shoplifter from asking the police to let him finish his beer on March 7.

A police aide spotted two men running from the Circle K convenience store on the corner of Speedway Boulevard and Park Avenue. He reported that they looked like they had just pulled a “beer skip.”

He confirmed with the Circle K clerk that the men who matched the description had just shoplifted beer. The clerk wished to press charges.

An officer spotted two men matching the police aide’s given description. They took off running in opposite directions when they saw him.

          RELATED: Pobeat 3/13/2019: Pranks a lot!

The officer located one of the men hiding in an alley near a shed. When the officer found him, he was drinking one of the stolen beers.

The officer requested him to stand and come out. The man began to chug the beer and told the officer to just let him “finish this one.”

Police did not note whether or not the man was allowed to finish the drink before the officer arrested him for shoplifting. 

A second officer confirmed with the Circle K clerk that he wished to press charges. He also provided a description of the shoplifters, which matched the found man and the man who had ran in the other direction. The second man was not found.

The found man had a Pima County warrant out on him for theft, false reporting to law enforcement and failure to appear.

The officers transported him to Pima County Jail, where he was booked on the warrant and shoplifting charges.

Busloads of Trouble

The maximum clearance signs in parking garages are not a gentle suggestion, as one teacher found out after the bus he was driving became stuck in Main Gate Garage on March 3. 

Two UAPD officers were called to the scene and met with the driver, a teacher at a Phoenix-area high school. The teacher told the officers how he ended up stuck in the situation.

He and his students were in Tucson for a Model United Nations conference and were staying in the Tucson Marriott University Park hotel. The hotel staff had told the teacher to park the bus in Main Gate Garage.

None of the students were in the bus when the teacher tried to park the vehicle. While driving in the garage, toward the north side, the top of the vehicle scraped a low hanging speed limit and direction sign. 

          RELATED: Pobeat 2/37/2019: Smoke and mirrors

Still driving north, the bus scraped the hood of its air conditioner against a concrete beam hanging from the garage roof. This tore the corner of the air conditioning and left the bus stuck in one spot.

There were white paint scrapes on the concrete beam, and the direction sign had a bent arm when the officers examined it. Officers could not conclusively determine if the collision with the bus had caused the damage.

The officers worked with the teacher to safely navigate the bus out of the parking garage. Under the officer’s guidance, the teacher managed to turn the bus around and exit the way it had come. No further damage was done to the structure of the garage.

The officers photographed the damage done to the garage and to the bus. They also took note of the bus’s insurance information.

Follow Vanessa Ontiveros on Twitter