Offbeat Enough

Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

1. Hide marijuana under your hood and then take the car for an oil change. 45 year-old Amy Brasher was arrested after a mechanic found 18 packages of marijuana packed in the engine compartment of the car Brasher brought in for an oil change. Brasher later said she didn’t realize the mechanic needed to lift the hood to change the oil.

2. Post your bail in coins after being charged with stealing from vending machines. Police charged Gregory Rosa, 25, with a string of vending machine robberies in January when he fled from police inexplicably when they spotted him loitering around a vending machine and later tried to post his $400 bail in coins.

3. Leave your license plate at the scene of a crime. Kentucky: Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, they pulled the bumper off the truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home, leaving the bumper and the attached license plate at the scene.

4. Forget that your index finger doesn’t really shoot bullets. Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun, but failed to keep his hand in his pocket.

5. Go ahead and argue over Kool-Aid and make sure you have your gun. Levon Howard lost a shoot-out with his roommate Edwin Heyliger, who was charged with murder. Howard had broken into Heyliger’s room, angry that someone had drunk his Kool-Aid, and in the ensuing argument, both scrambled for guns.

6. Assume the judge’s name rhymes with “no way.” At his sentencing for driving a school bus while drunk, Harold Keith Lone showed up in court staggering, shouting obscenities, gesturing wildly and with alcohol on his breath. Asked if he were drunk, Lone replied, “No way. No way, Jose.”

7. Allow your pet igunana to take the wheel. When they pulled over a car that was weaving, cops found Finley the iguana at the wheel. The real driver, John Ruppell, was slouched in the front seat. He was charged with drunken driving and Finley was taken to the SPCA.

8. Forget to check whether uniformed cops are in line at the store you decide to rob. A masked gunman walked into a gas station in Shreveport, Louisiana, and demanded money, but he apparently didn’t see that the line included a police officer in full uniform. L.J. Scott, a member of the Shreveport Police Department’s armed robbery task force, told our would-be robber to put his hands up. Scott confiscated the handgun and arrested the would-be robber, identified as 21-year-old Derek Pierson Jr.

9. When in court on charges of stealing shoes, display the shoes you stole. In court, shoe store robbery suspect Charles Taylor propped his feet up on the defense table while wearing a pair of tan boots he’d taken from the store at knife point.

10. Use the elevator while making an escape. Sitting in a San Antonio room awaiting sentencing, convicted burglar Adam Flores, 20, fled when a bailiff unfastened his handcuffs. Police caught him a minute later as he stood calmly waiting for an elevator at the end of the hall.

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