Police say they’ve arrested one of two seedy characters who allegedly stole from a Virginia convenience store with real, hollowed-out watermelons on their heads.
The knock-off jack-o-lanterns showed up at a Sheetz convenience store around 9:30 p.m. on May 6, according to the Louisa police department. Both men had watermelons on their heads with holes cut out for eye slits, and they made off with an unspecified amount of alcohol.
Security footage from the store shows both men in their melon masks and it’s a sight to behold, if nothing else.
It’s unclear what seeded the idea in the melon-headed miscreants’ minds. However, police say they’ve managed to bust open the case after appealing to the public for help.
Justin M. Rogers, who was 20 at the time of the incident, has been arrested in connection with the case, according to police. Rogers is facing charges of wearing a mask in public while committing larceny, underage possession of alcohol and petit larceny (under $500) of alcohol.
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Records show he is due to appear in court on July 7.
Police say they’re narrowing in on a second suspect, although the time isn’t quite ripe to identify him.
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Customers at the convenience store said they were truly shocked to hear about the case.
“It’s so stupid,” customer Candice Wendt told local station WRIC. She also described the masks as “innovative but ridiculous.”
“The amount of work that you have to do to actually hollow out a watermelon to stick on your head, I think, is kind of crazy,” she said.
Customer Barry Welch acknowledged that it was an original idea.
“I definitely give them some points for ingenuity,” he said. “At a time like this, you could’ve worn any kind of mask. But to come up with a watermelon…”
It’s unclear what happened to the watermelons, but it’s pretty clear the suspects weren’t using their own melons in their plot.
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