STOCKTON, CA – Stockton police were searching for a teenager who allegedly shoplifted from two Stockton businesses Monday with the help of an unlikely accomplice — a live snake wrapped around his arm.
The teen walked into the Walgreens pharmacy at the corner of Center and West Harding Way in Stockton just after 9 p.m. Monday, Stockton police spokesman Pete Smith said.
According to witnesses, the boy was acting strangely when store security noticed him trying to hide a flashlight in his clothes, Smith said.
“He was acting kind of erratically,” Smith said. “The security guard saw what he thought was the suspect trying to conceal some items to shoplift from the store.”
But when security approached the man, Smith said the boy began to act “even more erratically, revealing…a live snake which was wrapped around his arm.”
As Walgreens workers approached the boy, employee Mohammad Sohail said the suspect began threatening those workers with the reptile.
“He tried to scare us with the snake,” Sohail said.
Smith said the boy fled on a BMX bike. A teen matching a similar description was also suspected of stealing from a nearby McDonald’s restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard earlier Monday.
It was a “very, very strange course of events…using this live animal to intimidate,” Smith said.
Smith said investigators believe the snake was 3 to 5 feet long and they were not immediately sure what type of snake the suspect used.