Stranger than fiction

And I thought the races were bad enough.

Click the headline. It’s real.

(A nod to Mr. Schmader for pointing this one out.)

Trenchtown Keystone? The great sand heist

Excuse me, but how do you steal a beach? Okay, Rory Carroll explains this for us, courtesy of The Guardian:

Thieves in Jamaica have embarrassed police and triggered a political row by stealing a beach – and making a clean getaway.

Hundreds of tonnes of white sand vanished from a planned resort on the island’s north coast in July but three months later there is no sign of suspects nor sand.

An estimated 500 truck-loads of sand were removed from the Coral Spring beach in Trelawny and were believed to have been sold to rival resorts, a hefty logistical feat which has stumped police.

“It’s a very complex investigation because it involves so many aspects,” Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner for crime at the Jamaica Constabulary Force, told the BBC.

“You’ve got the receivers of the stolen sand, or what we believe to be the sand. The trucks themselves, the organisers and, of course, there is some suspicion that some police were in collusion with the movers of the sand.”

And while Carroll notes that Jamaican police have received much criticism of late, especially for its investigation of cricket coach Bob Woolmer’s death, he also notes that last year thieves stole a Hungarian resort.

So it’s not just Jamaica, jah?

(A tip o’the hat to Jonah at Slog.)

Beer heist!

Shawn Pogatchnik reports for the Associated Press:

Irish police were hunting for a beer bandit who stole 450 full kegs from the Guinness brewery – the largest heist ever at Ireland’s largest brewer.

National police said a lone man drove into the brewery – a Dublin landmark and top tourist attraction – on Wednesday and hitched his truck to a fully loaded trailer awaiting delivery to city pubs ….

…. Police said the raider took 180 kegs of Guinness stout, 180 kegs of U.S. lager Budweiser and 90 kegs of Danish beer Carlsberg. Guinness brews both of those foreign brands under license for sale in Ireland ….

…. Each keg holds about 88 British-sized pints, the most common serving size in Ireland, equivalent to 20 ounces each. The total theft involves 39,600 pints with a retail value exceeding $235,000.

What really disturbs me the most is the idea that “Guinness” and “Budweiser” appear in the same sentence, much less are brewed by the same company in Ireland.

While police have not released any details about the suspect—there may not be any details to give—they have suggested that it will be difficult for the thief to sell the stolen beer.

So what we have, apparently, is a stolen trailer full of beer that cannot be sold. Seems to me the suspect should be easy to find on an island approximately the size of South Carolina. (Insert your preferred bad joke here.)