Welcome to the World Wide Weird

Today’s crime doesn’t pay story (it doesn’t even cover expenses for this band of dimwits) comes to us from sunny Melbourne. Note for the non local WWWers amongst us, Melbourne, Australia; the pretty place that it is, is about as about as sunny as George W. Bush is articulate – you get the point I’m sure.

A bungling armed robber shot his female accomplice as they held up a restaurant in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne overnight.

Shock! Horror! Gasp! Look, I never got around to watching enough Law and Order or CSI, but I do know one should ensure the planning and executing stages of a daring robbery need more than these guys came up with.

Was it well planned? You bet.

The couple waited until after the last customers had left the Cuckoo restaurant, in Olinda, before confronting a staff member by his car in the restaurant’s car park .

The pair demanded the staff member hand over a black plastic bag, which it is thought they believed contained the restaurant’s takings.

So aptly targeted, the Cuckoo resturant. Now you are probably wondering where did things started to go pair-shaped?

However, the bag actually held left-over bread rolls, which the staff member was planning to feed to his chickens.

The money is safe but someone’s chooks will NOT be pleased.

Restaurant General Manager Horst Lantzsch said the bandits then demanded the staff member’s car keys.

He said as the staff member handed over the car keys, the shotgun discharged, wounding the woman in the stomach.

Lets see; that’s a fail on planning AND execution. I wonder how long before camera phone footage of the (so called) robbery is posted on Youtube?

“She got injured very heavily, and she fell to the ground in the middle of the street in Olinda main road,” Mr Lantzsch said.

Yeah, I suspect being hit at point blank range by a shotgun will do that for you.

“She dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.”

With the benefit of hindsight this gang would have been better off stealing potatoes; at least then Larry, Moe and Curly would have had something to eat.

Mr Lantzsch said he and his staff member then ran inside the restaurant and locked the doors.

Mr Lantzsch said no staff were injured, no money taken and no damage was caused in the attempted robbery.

“It was frightening, everybody was a bit in shock,” he said.

Not as much shock as the woman with the shotgun wound I’ll wager.

The injured woman took herself to the William Angliss Hospital before being transferred to The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne with serious injuries.

A 37-year-old Brooklyn man was arrested shortly after 5am and was being questioned by detectives, Victoria Police spokesman Senior Constable David Fitzgerald said.

Ah yes, the timeless “assisting the police with their enquiries”. Never a good sign that.