The kids in Head Start just can't catch a break. If it's not the federal government shutting down or arbitrarily cutting funding to the low-income preschool program, it's petty thieves breaking into their classrooms.
At 4 a.m. on Wednesday, one such criminal broke into Head Start of Greater Dallas' preschool at the Lancaster-Kiest Shopping Center in East Oak Cliff, according to police.
The burglar was scared off by the alarm that began to sound shortly after he'd removed the Plexiglas from the front door, but not before he grabbed some loot -- an apple-shaped piggy bank filled with 300 pennies, give or take a couple.
Site manager Evelyn Jackson says the center collects the pennies as part of an occasional game in which the 3- and 4-year-old students guess how many coins are inside. Whoever guesses closest gets to take them home.
Without even venturing a guess, the thief took the money and ran before police arrived on Wednesday morning, but Jackson says she knows the man's name and address and that the burglary was recorded by security cameras: "We have his picture clear as day."
So, police should have no trouble catching him. Unless he's already already hopped on a plane and fled for some place without a U.S. extradition treaty.
