Wanted cell phone thief arrested after attempting to use police station phone to call home
Reality continues to outstrip our wildest fictions
Last week a man suspected of cell phone theft in Guiyang went to a local police station hoping to use the office phone to call his family and inform them that he wouldn’t be home for the Spring Festival holiday. Within minutes, one of the officers on duty recognized the man, surnamed Wang, as a wanted person and promptly cuffed him, local media reported.
In the early hours of February 3rd, a cell phone left unattended at a Guiyang internet cafe was reported stolen. Local police identified Wang as their primary suspect and obtained a clear photograph of him that was the basis of their ongoing search for the alleged thief.
“A few days later he came to our station seeking help,” an officer surnamed Zhou told local media. “He’s a vagrant without any money. He was hoping to call his family and let them know that this year he wouldn’t make it home for the holidays. It’s possible he thought that such a small incident [as cell phone theft] could have gone unreported. He probably didn’t know the police were already on the lookout for him.”
Wang is now in custody, where he will remain until the value of the stolen phone is appraised, Zhou said. He reportedly flipped the phone for 200rmb shortly after absconding with it.
“This year he’s definitely not making it home for the Spring Festival,” netizens joked on Chinese social media. One commenter on Weibo suggested that perhaps Wang was led astray by an aphorism from a novel by the Taiwanese wuxia writer Gu Long (古龙): “The most dangerous place is also the safest.”
