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Police in Sapporo are looking for a man who tried to get away with 25 shoplifted items from a convenience store on Sunday morning.
According to police and local media, the incident occurred at around 2:30 a.m. at a Lawson store in Shiroishi Ward. Police said store surveillance camera footage showed the man come into the store, pick up a shopping basket and then start putting a bento, bread, canned drinks and other items worth about 5,000 yen in it.
When the man hurriedly left the store without paying, a 58-year-old male employee went outside after him. As the man got on his bike, the shopping basket tipped over and the shoplifted items scatted onto the the sidewalk.
The man threatened the employee with a knife and told him to back off or he would kill him. He then got on his bike rode away, with none of the shoplifted items.
© Japan Today
19 Comments
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kurisupisu
Stealing food to live?
Surely, the perp needs help not prison although that is what he will be given-a prison term if caught.
Legrande
Seems he brought the knife and was prepared to go to extreme measures.
The items he attempted to take suggests he is having a hard time making ends meet.
virusrex
Shoplifting food may get him some sympathy, but threatening about killing the cleck with a knife will definetely land him in Jail when caught. He brought a knife with this specific purpose and one wrong thing happening and the clerk could have been seriously wounded or end up dead.
Randy Johnson
The two largest age groups of shopplifters in japan are elderly men and women.
And now with the worldwide food shortages and rising food prices, expect the shopplifting to intensify in all age groups.
Gaijinjland
Guess this guy never heard about welfare. At least in Tokyo they pay for a small apartment and give you 70,000 yen a month for living expenses. Pretty stupid to risk going to jail over 5,000 yen.
Rodney
really? I got 50% of three months wages and no rent money. I had paid income tax for 10 years.
finally rich
These kind of articles boggles my mind, even I as foreigner just fresh off the boat knew from day 1 how to get cash with 1 day of work. I also worked with interpreting/translation for multiple city halls in the country, that's where I found it its literally impossible to starve or sleep in the streets, unless you have some mental disorder that makes you refuse bed & board. All the japanese system aims is to lift every single citizen into the labor force and independence, so they can pay their taxes. How disconnected from society you have to be to go commit armed robbery for food worth 3.000, 5.000 yen... besides you could shoplift some 5x and get a pass here, but there is no suspended sentence for armed robbery.
Rodney
maybe he was connected to society and was in fact, hungry.
Restless
Good effort by the middle aged clerk but the chance of being stabbed for a paltry ¥1200/hour (10p.m.-6a.m. shift) is never worth the chase.
Lawson, at least, owes their hero employee a ¥5000 gift card as bonus and maybe,
a transfer and promotion to the day shift at the same hourly rate,
or more.
Restless
Looking closer, that ¥5000 for 25 items of “bento, bread, canned drinks and other items” doesn’t quite add up. Should be much more. Must be the wholesale cost for the store loss of the now tainted items and not the retail price they would have upcharged customers.
Up that “Employee of the Month” reward bonus to at minimum ¥10000.
Will be watching out for the follow up story of the desperate suspect still at large and what Lawson does for their employee’s good faith efforts.
purple_depressed_bacon
The employee will probably get some lip service and a bow - more for publicity than anything. A plaque stating his efforts if he's lucky. A pay raise? Doubtful.
How desperate must the guy have been to go steal from a convenience store? He couldn't have gone to a soup kitchen if he was hungry? Wait, do they even have soup kitchens in Japan?
Mocheake
If he needed money so badly, he could have sold the bicycle
Fighto!
Hopefully this dangerous criminal is caught soon from CCTV images - and locked away for a long, long time.
Good for the hero Lawsons staff.
Trapped
Some here assume that it is his bicycle. Perhaps, but more likely only through possession being 9/10 of the law.
Soup kitchen in Hokkaido? Me thinks not.
But if I was to put it on the line for food, it'd be from a supermarket, and for more essential items than canned drinks.
kurisupisu
Using a knife to threaten someone for sure is wrong and shoplifting too.
However, just literally rotting away in an apartment and dying just maybe wasn’t an option for the guy....
Nuno Teixeira da Cunha
Obviously one of the two or both reasons are explicit, he did that as a shout out his misfortune or / and because he is a mental hill person. The employee is for sure to congratulate for his efford to try to bring him to reason, he was highly professional , probably is capable of fit in a better job.
Sheikh Yerboaby
really? I got 50% of three months wages and no rent money. I had paid income tax for 10 years.
Yeah. I know a guy who is on the dole and he gets about 120k......afetr paying for his apartment/bills he has about 70k left over which he says does him fine