By JERRY McDONNELL

Peninsula (Alaska) Clarion

Times have changed. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid usually rode in, robbed the place, guns at the ready, and left with the loot, smiling all the way down the trail. They had a business plan.

Monday evening, about 9 p.m., the One Stop Grocery at Mile 5.4 on the Kenai Spur Highway had a different kind of robber. He didn’t even get away with his self-esteem.

Consider the scene: the store is packed with regular customers, a food delivery is taking place, and people are gassing their cars at the pump. Needless to say, the manager and all the clerks are busy.

A man walks into the liquor side entrance of the store and says, “Everybody freeze, nobody move. You know what that means.” Unlike Cassidy and Sundance, nobody really bothered to listen.

“I didn’t pay much attention to him,” Mike Ellis, the evening manager said. “He wasn’t a regular customer or a person I’d ever seen before.

“Having people occasionally being a bit boisterous on the liquor side of the store is not uncommon. Everyone kind of ignored him. We were busy.”

According to Ellis, the would-be robber went to the cooler, took some beer and said, “You people don’t understand. I really mean it.”

“I left him at the counter,” Ellis said. “He got more boisterous, louder and he had his hand in his pocket.”

Looking back on it, Ellis said, “He was one of the world’s dumbest criminals.”

The man apparently left the counter, and Ellis said he walked over to where the man was in the store to check on a piece of equipment and looked him in the eye.

Ellis said the man never showed a weapon, just kept his hand in his pocket.

“I didn’t even take him serious until three-quarters of the way through (the robbery attempt) because he was on the alcohol side. If he would have been on the grocery side, I would have hit 911 immediately.

“Different conditioning,” Ellis said.

Even the customers didn’t take the robber seriously. One of them is reported to have told the man that he could get in trouble talking like that.

“It’s usually pretty calm here. That was an event,” Ellis said.

Finally, Ellis did hit the 911 button.

The man got tired of being ignored, and, according to Ellis, shouted expletives, complained that nobody was listening to him and left.

The man drove away in a black vehicle in the direction of Soldotna.

“He didn’t get anything but a headache — not even the beer,” Ellis said.

According to the Kenai Police Department, the man is 40 to 50 years old with a mustache and shoulder-length dark hair with a mix of gray.

He is about 5-feet, 11-inches tall, with a medium build and was wearing jeans and a light-colored shirt, possibly plaid.

Ellis said he thought the man weighed about 140 to 150 pounds and was fairly well built.

“He didn’t strike me as an alcoholic. He was nervous and agitated,” Ellis said. “He may just have been having a bad day.”

Kenai police, Alaska State Troopers and the Soldotna Police Department all became involved in the attempted robbery. The store was closed for about two hours between 8 and 10 p.m. for interviews and investigations.

The man has yet to be apprehended, but evidence is being gathered and the case is under investigation, according to Kenai Police Lt. Jeff Kohler.

The El Paso, Texas Police Department issued the following press release:

Date: Friday, July 21st, at 12:30 a.m.

Dale Smith, 47 years of age, was arrested for Aggravated Assault and Assault after a drunken discussion with bar staff. Smith had been drinking at Incredible’s Lounge and had become intoxicated. Dale Smith ordered another drink but the waitress told him that he had too much to drink and she refused to serve him. Smith became upset and burned the waitress in the back of the neck with a cigarrette. Several other employees attempted to help the waitress and began to escort Smith to the front door. Smith became adamant and did not want to leave, so he pulled out a gun and pointed it at the employees. Although the gun turned out only to be a BB gun, the employees believed it to be real. While holding the employees at gunpoint, Smith, who had a prosthetic arm, and which was holding the gun, lost his arm and gun when his prosthetic arm fell off his body.

The suprised Smith quickly gathered his arm and the gun from the floor and abandoned his attempt to be served another drink. He attempted to leave but was stopped by police as he tried to leave the front door. He was arrested and bookedinto the El Paso County Jail under a $6000.00 bond. Moral of the story, always use your good hand.

Needless to say, all three went to jail and were convicted of armed robbery.

A commercial parking lot across the street from Cal State University Long Beach had been hit by armed robbers more than once. The owners of the lot reacted by installing an alarm system. The owners designated the University Police as first responders to the alarm.

Several days after the alarm was installed, the lot attendants saw the robbers walking toward the booth and they hit the alarm. My partner and I were dispatched to the lot. Driving separate cars, we came in from different directions and caught the two knife wielding robbers. While putting a suspect in my car I became aware of a vehicle driving around the back area of the lot. Wondering out loud I said, “I wonder who that is?”

The suspect with me said, “ Oh, that’s our driver.”

NOBLESVILLE, Ind. Four men broke into a veterinarian’s office looking for OxyContin, a painkiller that can be crushed and snorted to produce a heroin-like high.

Instead, they took oxytocin, a drug that induces childbirth, stimulates milk production, and is believed to help stimulate mothering instincts.

“They’re not very smart,” said Sgt. Eddie Moore of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department.

The four individuals James Fye, 19, Scott Earlywine, 19, Kieth Keele, 18, Rolla Keven Thompson, 19 are suspected in a string of 17 burglaries in five different counties in Indiana.

Police say they targeted doctors’ offices and dental offices and were primarily looking for cash, not drugs.

But, Moore said, they had taken nitrous oxide commonly known as laughing gas from one facility, and grabbed the oxytocin from the vet’s clinic.

“They ran across something that said Oxy, and they thought, ‘Hey we hit the jackpot,’” Moore said.

OxyContin is often referred to as “Oxy” by street users. Abuse of the drug has been linked to several deaths, and is considered a major health problem in several parts of the country.

What they took, however was oxytocin, which is not known for its narcotic effects.

“Oxytocin induces labor and lactation,” Moore explained. “I don’t know if they ever used it.”

The four men face multiple burglary, theft, and drug charges.

Jarrod Franse didn’t run for help when he saw two men stealing his pickup truck; he jumped in.

The 23-year-old college student had just returned to his home after a round of golf when he saw two men next two his 1991 Dodge truck. They jumped in and started the engine when he approached, but the Farwell resident wasn’t ready to say farewell to his truck just yet.

“His reaction was just to jump in the back,” said Parmer County Sheriff Randy Geries, who was quick to add that he didn’t recommend the risky stunt.

The two thieves then raced off onto a local highway, reaching speeds of more than 100 mph, Geries said.

“They’re swerving slamming on the brakes, trying to throw this guy out,” Geries said. Franse held on and shouted to other drivers for help. Eventually he broke the window into the passenger cab and started wrestling with the men.

After almost an hour, the thieves had enough, Geries said. They pulled over and ran off on foot, abandoning Franse and his truck. After he drove to a nearby farmhouse to call for help, police arrived and hunted for the hapless car thieves in the thick rows of corn.

“It belonged to this young man and he wasn’t about to let it go,” Geries remarked. With the help of a K-9 unit, they apprehended Joe Angel Roldan, 18, but the other suspect a juvenile managed to hide in the field overnight. He turned himself in the following morning, covered with more than 300 mosquito bites, police said.

They were charged with aggravated kidnapping and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

I’m an officer in Washington, and I’ve seen more than my share of stupidity.

A couple months ago, we got a call from a family in Tacoma saying that someone had broken into their house - and was still stuck in the bottom of the chimney. The burgler said that “it was getting tight as I went down,” and was eventually wedged at the bottom.

Recently we received a silent alarm from a gas station foodmart reporting another burglery. This one wanted some free beer, and in the process of sticking up the clerk with a gun, was asked for his ID. After showing his driver’s license to confirm his age (among other things) he took off with his booze.

We found him soon after.

I was in DUI enforcement when I just completed the roadside work on a DUI suspect. Because it was a Saturday night, and I was the only traffic/DUI deputy working, I was busy and rushing. After placing the suspect in my car and completing a quick search of the suspect vehicle, I drove north on US-1 with my suspect to the county jail, while the tow truck with the suspect’s car headed south. The suspect then asked me if anything would be disturbed in the car, and I said “no, it will be secured until you pay the tow bill.” He then replied in a releived tone, “Good. I mean, the DUI I can handle, I’m just glad you didn’t find all the cocaine in my car.”

After making a rapid U-turn after the tow truck that would make the Dukes of Hazzard proud, I stopped the tow truck and found about a half-dozen rocks of cocaine I had missed earlier.

Ironically, the fact he made such a stupid admission to me was used as evidence in his impairment for DUI!