[ExI] news of the weird

[spike]

Occasionally a news of the weird happens right in one's own neighborhood.

 

But before that, there is a back story that is relevant to all this.  Our
neighborhood has been remarkably free of crime for many years, but recently
we had an uptick in daytime burglaries.  A couple months ago, our friends
down the street bought one of those nifty video cameras which does image
comparison and if anything changes, it emails you a picture of whatever it
sees, sends it to your iPhone and so forth.  This guy is a big tech whiz up
at Stanford, so instead of doing my own due diligence, I Koreshed off of him
and bought an identical system.  It arrived a few days before Thanksgiving,
but I was busy with family matters, so the thing sat unopened in the box.

 

Last week, the guy who bought the system to start with was the victim of a
daytime burglary.  His home was full of high-zoot electronic whiz bang, and
the thieves got it all, games, laptop computers, all the electronic goodies.
His wife is a Stanford PhD candidate finishing up a thesis in biochemistry
on a home computer, which vanished along with the backup hard disc and home
server.  Much of the data was not in the cloud, so there was considerable
loss of labor.  The home security system, which he had owned for a couple
months, was still in the original package, unopened.  It was not stolen.  So
this past weekend, I was busy installing my home security cameras.

 

Now, the rest of the story.

 

We have a neighborhood crime watch.  Whenever anything happens where the
locals might be able to help solve a crime, the constabulary sends out an
email notice.  Yesterday around lunchtime, the constable tells everyone that
there was a suspicious activity, Hispanic male, mid-twenties, rang a
doorbell in a neighborhood where there aren't that many Hispanic families,
told the resident he was looking for his lost cat.  When asked, he seemed to
not know what his cat looked like or the cat's name.  He did have the genus
and species, and could likely identify the approximate number of paws the
missing beast possessed, but could provide very little information beyond
that.  When leaving the residence, the silly prole appeared to signal to a
vehicle down the street, which was described as a deep red or maroon compact
car.  No crime committed, NW notice went out anyway.

 

About two hours later, about 1400, a second notice goes out regarding a
brazen daytime burglary just down the street.  According to the constable,
there were "several suspects observed fleeing from a residence" carrying
what appeared to be the property of that resident, electronics, including a
television.  This time, a local witness having been alerted, gave good
descriptions of their car and at least two of the suspects.  One was a
sturdy black teenage male, perhaps 18, and the driver of the getaway
vehicle, who was. drum roll. "an elderly white female."  I kid you not.
That's what was reported.  Now the cops have the make, model, year, color
and plates on the car, a deep red or maroon Kia Sephia, possibly the same
maroon compact car seen nearby, two hours earlier with a Hispanic male
searching for a lost perfectly generic cat.

 

So now, this is weird.  We have what looks like a burglary gang led by a
white granny, with an ethnically diverse labor staff.  I suggested a number
of possibilities, such as the white granny was actually a young male thug in
disguise.  Another possibility, all the apparently young male thugs were
actually white grannies, in black and Hispanic thug disguises.  Or granny
was being held hostage and forced to drive.  Or the youths were being held
hostage by the granny and forced to burgle.  Or if the gang were all
grannies, they grab the loot, jump in the car, pull off the disguises, the
cops look right past them.  White grannies are as invisible as dark matter
in the cosmos to the constables.  Or, the perps flee with the loot, jump in
the car, don their white granny masks, instant cloak of invisibility to the
local constabulary.  

 

There are still some things I just don't understand.  They stole a
television and fled in a Kia Sephia.  Any television which would fit into a
Kia would not be worth the physical labor to haul away.  Most modern
televisions need a pickup truck to carry off, and at least two sturdy lads
to hoist the thing; white grannies in disguises can forget it, it would take
half a dozen of them to get one off the ground, never mind fleeing with damn
thing.

 

In any case, this whole thing will likely make it all the way up to FoxNews
of the weird, ja?  {8^D

 

spike

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