A man caught stealing wooden pallets from a Lake City grocery store tried to hide from officers early Wednesday, but wasn’t able to escape the keen senses of a police dog.
Around 2 am, police got a call about a man, who was in a fenced off area behind a Grocery Outlet near NE 127th and Lake City Way, throwing wooden pallets into the back of his pickup truck.
When officers drove into the alley behind the store—which has previously been targeted in other wooden pallet thefts—they saw the suspect duck behind his truck. By the time officers circled the block and pulled in to the fenced area, the man had disappeared.
So, officers called in one of SPD’s four-legged officers—police dog Ziva—who found the suspect laying down in the dirt, underneath a patch of blackberry brambles.
The suspect admitted to taking two wooden pallets from the store, but claimed the other nine pallets stacked in and around the bed of his truck were totally already like that before police got there.
Officers arrested the man for criminal trespass and theft, and returned the pallets to the grocery store.