It's an urge that all but the most upright among us have fought at one time or another. The unoccupied snack-cake delivery truck idling in front of the store, its unprotected cargo beckoning. Surely no one would miss a box or two, you tell yourself before dismissing the thought, deciding that, however delicious those oatmeal cakes may be, they're not worth a felony theft charge.
Police say that Anthony Thompson, 48, had no such compunction when he came upon the Little Debbie truck parked next to the Kroger at Maple Avenue and Medical District Drive early Thursday afternoon. He decided to help himself to the snack cakes, and he probably would have gotten away with it had he not gotten greedy and decided to take the entire truck.
The delivery man, emerging from the store a few minutes later, immediately noticed that it was gone. He called police, who promised to be on the lookout.
Meanwhile, the delivery man and his boss went for a drive. They were surprised when, about an hour later, they spotted Thompson driving the missing truck north on Harry Hines Boulevard, not two miles from where it'd been stolen.
They called police, who performed a traffic stop and arrested Thompson. But they quickly discovered that the truck, so recently packed full of snack cakes, was empty.
Thompson told the cops that he'd just left a property on Lake Avenue, a couple of blocks from the Kroger, where he'd sold the Little Debbie cakes. The man who purchased them said he'd paid $5 per box, meaning that Thompson unloaded $5,000 worth of snack cakes for $500. Police recovered most of the merchandise, but 10 of the boxes were already gone. Someone must've been hungry.
