Posted
10/16/2004 05:44:00 PM
by Douglas
Maybe I don't have anything for
this story, but it's still funny.
When police went to Ronnie Luhn's home Friday looking for a few newspaper boxes that were reported stolen, they got more than they expected.
"They were in the bathroom, kitchen, entire living room, bedroom and garage," said Gary Storemski, an investigator with the Houston Police Department's Burglary and Theft Division.
Police found 181 coin-operated newspaper boxes stacked and crammed in Luhn's one-bedroom home in the 1700 block of Silber. Of the machines, 124 belong to the Houston Chronicle and 57 are the property of El Dia, the local Spanish-language daily paper.
In many cases, Luhn had broken the locks of boxes, then replaced them with his own locks, which he would use to collect change weekly.
181 newspaper machines? If stealing quarters out of the paper machine is a sizeable source of income for you, it's time to consider a career change.