Breath easy, North Texas. Come out of your fallout shelters and panic rooms. Let your children play in the front yard. After four months on the run, federal authorities have captured documented menace-to-society Lonnie L. Jones and locked him up.
His crime? Stealing burritos.
Federal prosecutors prefer to describe it as "theft of government property under $1,000," a crime that carries up to a year behind bars, but in this case it's the same thing.
According to court documents, Jones, 60, visited the canteen in the basement of Dallas' VA Hospital on April 9. An employee watched as he took multiple burritos and walked out without paying. How many burritos were stolen isn't specified, though there were few enough that they fit in Jones' pockets.
The canteen employee contacted a federal law enforcement officer, who reviewed surveillance footage of the alleged theft, then wrote Jones a ticket after locating the missing burritos in his bag.
Jones failed to pay that ticket, just as he had failed to pay a ticket he'd received five months earlier for allegedly stealing a pair of socks from the VA's canteen store. So, on August 12, U.S. Magistrate Judge Renee Tolliver signed a warrant for his arrest.
The documents filed on Tuesday don't detail the circumstances of his arrest, but that's OK. Just knowing that North Texas' burritos are once again safe is enough.
Send your story tips to the author, Eric Nicholson.
