No Pizza Is Worth Crawling Through Ventilation Duct To Steal

Listen, I get it. Pizza is delicious, and you may be tempted to go to extremes to be near it. But it is not a good idea to crawl through a pizzeria’s ventilation system in an effort to burgle the restaurant that makes it.

According to law enforcement in the Rochester suburb of Penfield, NY, a 53-year-old man had to be rescued by firefighters early on Friday morning, TWC News reports. They had to dismantle a part of the exhaust system in the restaurant to get him out, causing more than $2,000 in damage.

Police were called when a clerk at a neighboring convenience store heard the suspect yelling for help.

“I kept hollering, ‘Where are you?’ ‘I’m trapped in here!’ ‘Trapped in where?'” he said. “When the sheriff’s came they looked around and heard him. They said he was on the roof, that he scaled the building and got stuck in the vent, the oven vent.”

Along with charges of third-degree burglary and second-degree criminal mischief and possession of burglary oils, the pizza oven suspect’s bungled burglary has snagged himself a spot in Consumerist’s “You Have Only Yourself To Blame” Hall of Fame, where he has plenty of company:

1. The bank robbery suspect who was caught by police when he stopped for lunch at a casino.

2. The KFC worker who pulled a gun on his boss and returned for a paycheck the next day.

3. Suspected thieves who police said tried to sell a pawn shop owner his own stuff back, unaware that they’d purloined it from him in the first place.

4. A guy who police overhead planning a burglary after he unwittingly butt-dialed 9-1-1.

5. The burglary suspect who made things pretty easy by falling through the store’s ceiling… in front of cops.

6. A man who was freed after 15 years in prison for robbery who was accused of heading straight back there to rob it again.

7. The students who were arrested after allegedly stealing a $7,500 Ronald McDonald figure and then completing their drive-thru order.

8. A guy who was found sleeping in his car at a McDonald’s drive-thru who was charged with DUI after he tried to pay cops for his burgers.

9. The burglary suspect who broke into a restaurant and was caught after he tried to cook himself up some tasty crab cakes.

10. A man accused of burgling a fried chicken restaurant who found himself in handcuffs when he returned to the eatery the next day — and wearing the same clothes, no less.

11. The guy found snoozing at a Wendy’s drive-thru who woke up to a DUI and no fries.

12. The father-daughter duo accused of going on a burglary spree who were nabbed after she posted a doctored Microsoft employee badge on Facebook.

13. The criminal mastermind whose brilliantly plotted heist was undone after he returned to the scene to grab a remote control for the sound system he allegedly stole 30 minutes before.

14. A real-life Hamburglar accused of robbing a McDonald’s who was caught when he crashed into the local mayor.

15. Yet another snoozer, this time, a guy police found asleep in the McDonald’s drive-thru who was charged with driving while intoxicated after scoring a blood alcohol content of 0.14%.

16. The guy accused of breaking into Walmart and trying to saw through the ceiling of the store’s cash room while an employee was present.

17. The blabby teen who bragged online about pulling off a bank robbery. He apparently thought no one watches YouTube.

18. A would-be Walmart robber who was unfortunate to get hit by his own getaway vehicle.

19. The timid bank robber who scared himself silly by shooting his gun, and ended up fleeing without cash.

20. An accused robber of storage units who left behind a pizza box with his address on it.

21. The accused thief who made the rookie mistake of uploading pics from a stolen iPad to the cloud.

22. Speaking of uploading things, there was the time when a Disney cruise worker accused of stealing an iPhone unwittingly sent photos to the cloud of his adventures with the pilfered device.

23. The guy who reported the theft of an iPhone he’d just stolen from someone else to the police.

24. A very sleepy man who allegedly broke into a bar and then took a nice nap on the kitchen table.

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