‘Stranger Than Fiction’: Texas Man Broke into a Car Dealership, Only to Call 911 Himself Because He Couldn’t Find a Way Out —and All He Managed to Steal Was Candy
A Texas man who broke into a car dealership ended up calling the police on himself after he injured himself during his failed burglary and then couldn’t find a way out of the building.
Police in Tyler, Texas, said they got a call shortly before 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday, March 26, from a Dodge dealership where an active break-in was happening, KLTV reported.
Authorities said that 38-year-old Jeremiah Megallon threw a rock through one of the dealership’s windows and cut himself while climbing inside the building.
But once he was inside, he didn’t know how to get back out, so he dialed 911 for help.
“He said he had broken into the Patterson Dodge dealership in an attempt to steal a car but was unable to get out of the building. He had cuts from breaking a window at the dealership and crawling through it,” Tyler Police Department Public Information Officer Andy Erbaugh told Fox News.
Erbaugh also noted there were several unlocked doors in the building that Megallon could have used to leave the premises. Even the showroom’s side doors could be opened from the inside, even though they were locked from the outside, the PIO said.
When police and first responders arrived at the scene, they rushed Megallon to a local hospital to be treated for his self-inflicted injuries from the one-inch double-pane window he broke.
According to a member of the dealership’s staff, he wasn’t able to make off with anything valuable, only some candy from a salesperson’s desk.
“After 26 years here, truth is stranger than fiction,” Erbaugh said of the incident.
After he was treated for his injuries, Megallon was booked into Smith County Jail on a charge of burglary of a business. If convicted, he could face up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.