In a beautiful twist of irony, a man experienced instant karma last weekend when his pickup was stolen while he was robbing the business across the street, police say.
The incident took place around 6 a.m. Sunday when Kennewick police responded to reports of vehicle theft.
The owner told officers that someone had stolen his red 1992 Chevrolet pickup. He admitted that he had foolishly left his keys behind on the seat, and a thief drove off with the truck.
Police, reviewing the surveillance video, discovered that the reason the pickup owner had left his truck was, quite simply, due to the fact that he was stealing items from a business across the street.
The burglar/victim owner was then booked in the Benton County jail on a warrant and a new burglary charge.
His truck has not yet been recovered.
This story elicited laughter. Out loud. And then, inspiration struck. Where else has instant karma unleashed its bitter irony on others? Here is a sampling.
In 2018, a man was driving drunk in Fairfax, Virginia. He was spotted by police, who promptly tried to pull him over. The driver panicked and tried to escape.
While he did slow the car down, instead of stopping and putting it into park, he jumped out of the driver’s seat while the vehicle was still moving. He ran in front of his own car in attempt to flee, and the automobile hit him, knocking him into the ground. This may be one of many instances where a drunk driver ran over himself.
The entire ordeal was captured on a police car’s dash cam. They arrested the drunk, and it turns out that this was the man’s third offense.
Also in 2018, two California teenagers attempted to rob a 7-Eleven convenience store with a fake gun. Security camera footage captured the teens wearing hoodies to conceal their identities. The cashier put his hands in the air as they threatened him with the weapon and demanded the money from the cash register.
It just so happened that an armed security guard was sitting in his car in the parking lot. Since the guard saw the gun pointing at the cashier, he walked inside and shot the teens in their arms. They told the guard that the gun was fake, to which he replied, “Oh well. Mine is real!”
The teenage bandits both survived the incident. In the surveillance video, one of them asked, “Am I shot?”
They were taken to the hospital for their injuries. The teens were held without bail for the attempted robbery.
A 19-year-old Chicago man in 2017 decided to rob multiple stores at gunpoint. He approached a hot dog vendor in the city because they usually deal in cash. One of the vendors was holding a bucket of hot grease when the criminal held a gun to his head, demanding his cell phone, wallet, and all of the money in the cash box.
The hot dog vendor dropped the grease to reach for his wallet. The molten hot liquid spilled over thief, and the cash fell to the ground. He tried to holster his gun and bend over to pick up the money and accidently shot himself in the groin.
The suspect survived, but he was held in police custody without bail as he awaited trial for multiple counts of armed robbery.
Now, there is instant karma, and then there’s what happened to this guy.
Having already stolen a car, the thief drove to a pharmacy to rob it. He left the car running for a quick getaway, which turned out to be his first mistake. Another criminally minded pedestrian swooped in and made off with it just after first subject ran into the pharmacy.
Upon exiting with his second ‘score,’ he stood idle for a few seconds trying to figure out what had happened and what to do next. While he sat pondering his current predicament, a third individual snuck up behind him, grabbed the bag of cash and disappeared into the night.
And just when you think it can’t get any worse…it does. Bad guy #1, not knowing when to cut his losses and apparently feeling violated, marched right to the police station to report the robberies.
Unfortunately for him, the pharmacist he’d just robbed was there, too.
Asked by reporters if he thought it was possible to die of embarrassment, he ironically lamented the out-of-control crime rate of the city.
“We can’t even live a dishonest life anymore,” he said.
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