Police have arrested two people in conjunction with a shoplifting effort at a Wal-Mart in Edgewood, east of Albuquerque on Interstate 40.
According to police reports, a woman set fire inside the bathroom of the Wal-Mart, by igniting paper in a trash receptacle. Then she and an accomplice went to the paper goods section of the store and set fire to what may have been toilet paper rolls.
When the first fire was reported, Wal-Mart employees grabbed available fire extinguishers and headed toward the smoke-filled bathroom to extinguish the blaze. They didn’t seem to notice two women heading toward a shopping cart full of high-dollar items nearby.
With all the chaos underway, the women managed to slip out of the store and headed toward their car where they began unloading their booty from the shopping cart. At that point, security guards wised up to the scheme and arrested them.
Two other men, who had oddly given an unsolicited confession about that same time to security guards about shoplifting at the store the previous day, are also being sought. Police believe their “confession” was an attempt to distract attention and divert the security guards from the real shoplifting scheme.
As most of us can probably remember, a shortage of toilet paper was a subject of extreme concern when the COVID pandemic began a couple of years ago. I’m hopeful that the shoplifting caper in Edgewood didn’t put a dent in the toilet paper supply and return us to that harrowing experience.
aero-cordero.com 