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Man in Walmart Vest Leaves Store With Four Flat-Screen TVs

By Ephrat Livni, Esq. on February 26, 2016 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

With so many Walmart stores around the country, there is no shortage of news stories about the chain. But this latest is most amazing for the fact that it doesn't happen more often. A man in a Virginia location donned a Walmart vest over his clothes and stole multiple televisions from the store, reports UPI.

The Daily Grind

Dressed just like any other Walmart worker -- wearing a blue company vest over his tan cargo pants and gray hooded sweatshirt -- the man was caught on video entering the stockroom and loading four flat-screen televisions. He just didn't catch anyone's attention because he looked like he belonged.

The suspect was described as a 5-foot-10-inch tall black man in his early 20's with a thin build. Chesterfield County/Colonial Heights Crime Solvers shared surveillance images of the man on Facebook, asking for help in finding him.

"He loaded four flat-screen televisions onto a cart and pushed them out of the store through an emergency exit," Crime Solvers wrote. "They were loaded into a waiting, full-size SUV. Unfortunately, the man was not an employee of that Walmart or of any of the neighboring Walmart stores."

Walmart Crimes

A 2014 study by a University of South Carolina scholar, published in the British Journal of Criminology, linked the presence of Walmart stores in a county to higher crime rates. Walmart, of course, dismissed the study's methodology, and it's true that correlation and causation are too often confused when it comes to numbers.

According to the study, "If the corporation built a new store, there were 17 additional property crimes and 2 additional violent crimes for every 10,000 persons in a county." This latest Walmart crime story might provide some insight on why that happens. The presence of a store seems to inspire people to come up with creative ways to get more for less.

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