The owners of a Dunedin business had the last laugh after their store was burgled on Thursday night.

The thieves made off with what appeared to be six 1125ml bottles of gin, bourbon and vodka. However, there will be no hangovers in store for the offenders as the bottles were filled with water and cold tea and used only for display.

Constable Paul Anderson said the burglary of J.K. Sparrow, a hospitality accessories supplier on the corner of Police and Bond Sts, occurred on Thursday night.

Two windows were smashed and the store rifled through.

The bottles of “alcohol” and a jemmy bar were the only things taken.

It wasn’t a quick getaway - in fact, it wasn’t a getaway at all. When CD players, radios, cameras and calculators were found missing from an office in the Melaka Tengah district of Malaysia, it didn’t take long to find the suspect - he had fallen asleep in the office he had just allegedly robbed - listening to Cliff Richard CDs in the stolen CD players.

The Star newspaper reports that the company boss found him sleeping in a chair when he arrived for work the next day, with the aforementioned goods in his possession. The man, who is a suspect in eight other burglaries, is believed to have dozed off while waiting for other members of his gang who had broken in. His alleged accomplices have not been found.

A man who use a wire coat hanger to fish a cocaine-filled balloon from his throat wound up in surgery Tuesday after accidentally hooking himself.

Police, however, are having a hard time swallowing the man’s story of how he ingested the balloon and came to use the hanger that ended up lodged in his throat.

“I’ve been here for 23 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sgt. Jeff Davis said.

Police were summoned to Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Joseph Campus about 10:30 a.m. by doctors reporting they had a man in his 20s with a coat hanger stuck in his throat.

Doctors cut the hanger near the man’s mouth to help him to speak more easily and to offer police an explanation before being rushed to surgery.

The man said he was at a party Monday night when someone slipped a balloon full of cocaine into his drink.

He said he finished his drink, swallowing its contents and the balloon in a big gulp. His explanation of how he came to realize he had swallowed a balloon full of cocaine wasn’t clear, Davis said.

Tuesday morning, he straightened a hanger and, tilting back his head, he worked the hooked end down his throat, hoping to snag the balloon and pull it out.

Instead, he snared his throat. A friend drove him to the hospital.

“He was in a lot of pain,” Davis said. “He couldn’t talk to us a whole lot.”

The man was transferred to the trauma ward at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Francis Campus, Davis said. His injuries weren’t life-threatening.

Doctors made a large incision in his throat to unhook the hanger, Davis said.

Hiding drugs in an ingested balloon or condom is not unheard of, he said.

Removing the balloon with a coat hanger is.

If doctors or police find the balloon of cocaine the man swallowed, Davis said, he could face drug possession charges.

Story courtesy of Alex Branch at The Witchita Eagle

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A determined thief who broke into a Canadian weather station made off with more than C$300 worth of tools, as well as a dose of radiation.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police issued an unusual warning on Friday urging the thief to seek medical treatment immediately, reminding him or her that the visit can remain secret because of doctor-patient confidentiality rules.

Police said the thief was exposed to radiation when entering and leaving the unmanned station at Mount Sicker on southern Vancouver Island through a Doppler Radar dome near the top of the facility.

“The radar dome is bathed in radiation. Human exposure to this type of radiation could result in permanent damage to soft tissue, i.e. eyes and testicles,” police said a statement.

To reach the dome, the thief had to get through three barbed wire fences and climb an 80-foot spiral staircase. It is not known when the break-in occurred, but it was believed to have happened within the past three weeks.

EAGAN, Minnesota - We’ve heard the Anthrax scares. And some say smallpox could be next.

But Eagan police heard the strangest threat of them all Friday night when a man arrested for shoplifting hundreds of dollars worth of Nicorette gum claimed he was recruited to steal the stuff so it could be sent to Pakistan to aide terrorism.

The man said he and his three cohorts were hired by someone in New York City to steal the over-the-counter smoking cessation aide that would eventually be sent to Pakistan, said Eagan police Sgt. Jeff Johnson. It prompted police to call the FBI, who then interviewed the man.

“They think it’s a hoax,” Johnson said. “But we still don’t know why they wanted the gum.”

It was a busy and bizarre night for Eagan police, who after the Nicorette incident, spent the rest of the night conducting a manhunt for two men caught trying to steal computers from Wal-Mart.

The Nicorette theft was called in shortly after 7 p.m. at the Walgreen Drug Store at Lexington Avenue South and Diffley Road. When police arrived, they found two men and two teen-age girls in a car with more than $2,500 worth of Nicorette gum, Johnson said.

They had apparently tried to fool the security system by lining a shopping bag with aluminum foil. It didn’t work, but police still couldn’t tell how much had been taken from the store because the gum had been dumped into the car with a large supply that had already been taken elsewhere.

The four people were in a car that had been rented in South Carolina.

Hassan Amori Cabrera, 29, of St. Louis, Mo., and Jermaine Shell, 27, of Brooklyn, N.Y., were being held at the Dakota County Jail in Hastings on suspicion of possession of stolen goods and possession of shoplifting gear. Two girls, ages 16 and 17, both of Brooklyn, were being held at a shelter because the juvenile detention facility was full, Johnson said.

Just as police were wrapping up that case, they got a call at 11:15 p.m. for a shoplifting incident at Wal-Mart on Town Centre Drive. Police found the driver at the back door, Johnson said.

As police were questioning the man, two others walked out of the back of the store each carrying a $1,900 Hewlett Packard computer. When they saw the police, they dropped the computers and ran south, Johnson said.

Police searched the area and called in a State Patrol helicopter to help, but could not find the men. Meanwhile, police arrested the first man on suspicion of felony theft.

Joshua O.R. Budd, 20, of Wyoming, Minn., was being held Saturday in the Dakota County Jail.

Story courtesy of Amy Mayron of Pioneer Press.

Detectives were left in stitches by security camera film of a robbery by two teenagers who forgot to cut eyeholes in their masks.

Officers watched in astonishment as the pair repeatedly bumped into one another, demanded money from a shop wall, and failed to notice their newsagent victim dialling 999 (The UK’s equivalent of 911).

Lawyers at York crown court were convulsed in their turn as details emerged of how Thomas Rathbone, 18, and a 17-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons, crashed into the shop counter.

Finally, in frustration, they made the cardinal mistake of pulling off their masks to get their bearings in front of the security camera.

The pair admitted charges of robbery in York, in July. The court heard on Monday that they had succeeded only in stealing three packets of cigarettes.

Rathbone, of York, was sent to a young offender’s institution for a year, and the other youth was given a year’s detention and training order.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire police, who may find the video hard to resist as a Christmas party item, said:

“They must have been the dumbest raiders in the world. The video is more of a farce than a hold-up.”

LONGVIEW, Wash. — A man sought in a bank robbery apparently tried to play it cool by kicking back and sipping a cold one. It didn’t work.

Shortly after hearing that the bank, less than 100 yards from the Longview Police Station, had been robbed, Sgt. Ed Jones looked out his second story window Thursday. He saw a man matching the description of the suspect sitting on a bench and drinking a beer he had purchased at a nearby convenience store after the robbery.

Jones walked across the street and arrested him.

“He was pretty blase about the whole thing,” Jones said Friday. “I don’t think he cared whether he got caught or not.”

Edmond D. Alexander, 54, was booked into Cowlitz County Jail for investigation of first-degree robbery. He was being held on $20,000 bail.

Jones said Alexander held up a teller at the U.S. Bank by putting his hand in his sweater pocket and pointing his finger at her.

Police found the rest of the money in his pocket when they arrested him, Jones said.