New Black Sport: Topless Shoplifting
by Jeff Davis
Every now and then a new sport is introduced. There are extreme sports like base-jumping and acrobatic skate-boarding on half-pipes. The Olympics now has an event for snow-boarding. Those three sports seem to be overwhelmingly white sports. Clearly there’s a need for more black sports. Well, one black woman in Georgia has done her part to introduce a new sport, which may (or may not) catch on in inner city neighborhoods: topless shoplifting.
According to the Decatur Daily News, “Drivers held up by a fender bender Monday afternoon on Danville Road Southwest saw something unusual — an alleged shoplifter trying to bum a ride to escape mall security guards. But that wasn’t all they saw, one witness said. Evan Ashby, a Sears employee, said he joined the chase after he saw the woman run, ‘huffing and puffing,’ away from a pile of discarded, stolen clothes and a loss prevention officer whose face she allegedly clawed in an attempt to get away. Police later identified the woman as Candace Darcel Jones, 21, of 904 East 16th St., Sheffield.” Jones had been spotted in Sears loading up on clothing just before she ran out the door.
It’s a bit remarkable that anyone would be so brazen (or foolish) as to steal an armful of clothes with no apparent plan, but to run by the cash registers and out the door. Most thieves have a getaway vehicle waiting for them, but not this woman. She had the “bright” idea of improvising an escape plan at the last second, thinking that her fellow Blacks would want to help her evade authorities and thereby become accessories to her ill-planned criminal adventure.
According to Mr. Ashby as quoted in the Decatur Daily, “She gets into the middle of Danville Road, and I guess decides that we’re not going to leave her alone. She yells, ‘Help me! Help me! They’re going to take me to jail!’ and she starts going up to each car, beating on the window and begging the people to let her in. … Both of her breasts come falling out of her shirt … and she’s beating on windows. … She’s walking down the middle of Danville road, from car to car, stopping cars that are in the other lane. She’s going up to black folks, saying, ‘I’m black! I’m black! Let me in! You know how it is.’ … She was begging people to get in the car. ‘Please, man, please, I can’t go to jail, just take me anywhere, man.’ ”
The berserk half-naked negress jumped on the bumper of a red pickup truck that slowed down and stopped. Mall security officers chased her round and round the truck, ebony udders flapping in the breeze, until she broke away and ran into a First American Bank, where she was arrested for disorderly conduct by an off-duty police detective. The black woman told the police that she was stealing from the mall because she was pregnant and she needed money to pay an $800 fine in court the next day for a previous offense. However, she couldn’t have been all that broke, since according to the newspaper, “Morgan County Jail released her Tuesday on $1,750 bond.”