TEXAS POLICE GIVEN WEIRD TALE BY EMPLOYEE AFTER COMPUTERS STOLEN http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/local_news/article/0,1891,TRN_5784_5071409,00.html

Weird theft

Store employee claims suspects kidnapped him

By Courtney ReeseTimes Record News
October 17, 2006

When officers went to check the welfare on a man who did not show up for work at Sunshine Natural Foods on Friday, they met with a possible kidnapping victim, Sgt. Joe Snyder, public information officer with the Wichita Falls Police Department, said.

The store's manager had called police at about 8:45 a.m. Friday to report several stolen computers, he said. The manager told officers the alarm system had been turned off and the doors were unlocked.

She said the 27-year-old man who cleans the building over night had not shown up for work.


Snyder said officers went to the man's home to check on his welfare. He also had three warrants out for his arrest for traffic violations.

When officers arrived, the man was just getting home, Snyder said.

Police asked him if he knew anything about the stolen computers, and he said he had been kidnapped from work.

The man told officers the following:

He had gone to work as usual, decoded the alarm system and went inside. Two men dressed in black came inside the building between midnight and 1 a.m. as he was cleaning.

One was carrying a gold, pearl-handled pistol, and the other had a large knife - about 1 1/2 feet long - inside his belt.

They forced the man to load computers into his own truck, and then drive them around to unknown addresses to sell the computers.

Just before 9 a.m., they dropped off the man at his doctor's office and left in his car.

He called his girlfriend and was just getting home when officers came to his house.

The man was not injured or threatened.

Snyder said police arrested the man for his outstanding warrants.

Investigators are looking into whether "an employee" is a suspect for the stolen computers - a charge of theft over $1,500 under $20,000, he said.