A would-be burglar was caught early one Wednesday after he got stuck in the ventilation system of a Maryland convenience store, police said.
Shane Morgan Hall, 21, of the first block of Mahogany Drive in North East, Md., told Cecil County sheriff's deputies he was playing hide and seek.
Hall was arrested at 7:14 a.m. when deputies and firefighters answered a call about a man stuck in the ventilation system at the BP station in the 2300 block of W. Pulaski Highway.
Lt. Bernard Chiominto said when the owner arrived to open the store, he spotted a pair of feet dangling from the duct.
Deputies said Hall had removed the ventilation cover, crawled through the vent, got stuck and set off a fire extinguisher that sprayed powder over the store, Chiominto said.
Deputies freed Hall and took him to Union Hospital in Elkton, where he was treated for minor injuries.
Hall, who allegedly gave police two false names, was charged with two counts of submitting false information to a police officer and one count each of secondand fourthdegree burglary and malicious destruction of property.
He also was wanted for failing to appear for court on a non-related drug charge.
Hall has persisted in his story that he was just playing hide and seek on the roof with some other adults and decided to hide in the ventilation system.
He was being held in the Cecil County jail on $30,000 bail.
Source: Delaware Online
Hide and seek is a wonderfully, adventurous game that, I'm sure, we all remember playing at one time in our childhoods. But, unless you have small children or grand kids, I can't imagine grown adults having any reason to want to play a game where you have to find a hiding place and stay there until you're found.
Adults with that kind of leisure can surely find better things to do with their time and energy. Mr. Hall's excuse was obviously one made up in haste and, unfortunately, made him look even more ridiculous to the authorities. In some twisted way, fabricating a flimsy reason for getting stuck in a vent made more sense to him than just admitting to the crime.
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