By Bill Laitner
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT — Here’s the case of a crook now cooling his heels in jail — and nursing some wounds —while thanking his lucky stars he got caught.
Because it was either get caught or likely bleed to death while crouched in dark and lonely woods north of Detroit, a short dash from the business where he’d bungled a burglary. According to police, the suspect cut himself seriously as he climbed through a big plate-glass window he smashed at a gas station.
Then again, if he hadn’t bled so heavily and left behind a vivid trail of red — well, police might not have caught him in time.
This seemingly life-saving arrest occurred shortly after midnight near a four-lane stretch of Ortonville Road. The spot is just a football field north of affluent Clarkston village, in Oakland County’s Independence Township, according to a release from the Oakland County sheriff.
Responding to an alarm, deputies rushed to a BP Gas station and saw that a front window had been smashed by a chunk of concrete. Deputies also saw a blood-red trail that led from that window to the station’s front counter and back again — but no bad guy in sight, the release said.
Surmising that a seriously injured crook was somewhere nearby, the officers searched woods just north of the station, and sure enough — there they found him, “covered in a large amount of his own blood from lacerations to his right wrist and right shin,” the release said. Evidently, the self-sliced dude was in no mood to resist these folks in sheriff’s uniforms ... because the bungling burglar confessed on the spot, the release went on.
Within minutes, paramedics from the township fire department arrived to “to stabilize the suspect and control the bleeding,” and then — “because of the severity of his injuries” — they rushed 24-year-old man from Lapeer by ambulance to McLaren Hospital in Pontiac, the release said.
Needless to say, police are seeking criminal charges. But that suspect has to figure he did a fine job of already punishing himself.
Copyright 2017 Detroit Free Press