If you’re keeping score in the War on Stupidity, add another mostly “W” for the good guys.
Sunday night, April 5, around 10:21 p.m., a pack of aspiring gang-banger geniuses decided the SCHEELS Sporting Goods store on South MacArthur Boulevard in Springfield looked like an easy target. Motion alarms started screaming the second they forced their way in. These tactical masterminds didn’t just trip one alarm — they lit up the whole panel like a Christmas tree.
Camera footage captured the brilliance: three juveniles making entry, rifling through a gun case, and then — because nothing says “professional crew” quite like this — they grabbed a bunch of bicycles right off the sales floor and pedaled away into the night like it was the Tour de France for felons.
Spoiler: it didn’t end well.
Springfield Police were on scene fast, perimeter up, K-9s rolling. One suspect, 20-year-old Romero Allen, got scooped up shortly after 11 p.m. near 9th and Spruce. Cops found him with two of the stolen firearms, ammo, and other loot in his possession. The other two clowns tried fleeing on foot through yards and alleys around 13th and Pine, but the net closed quick.
By Monday (April 6), detectives had all three juveniles in custody. Five more firearms were recovered during the arrests. The investigation didn’t stop there — a search warrant led to 35-year-old Avery Sanders, who picked up charges including armed habitual criminal, possession of stolen firearms, and drug delivery.
Total haul for law enforcement: all 12 firearms stolen from SCHEELS recovered, plus another two guns, roughly 151 grams of suspected meth, 91 grams of crack, thousands in cash, and other stolen merchandise. Fourteen guns, drugs, and over $12,000 in currency. Nice work, officers.
Let’s be real: these guys are the poster children for why we call career criminals a special breed of moron. They think they’re slick. They figure a sporting goods store full of guns is just sitting there waiting for them. They ignore the alarms, the cameras, the fact that half the state is armed and the cops actually show up. Then they ride away on bright-colored kids’ bikes like the world’s dumbest getaway drivers.
Newsflash, geniuses: natural selection is still undefeated.
Meanwhile, SCHEELS is back in business, the guns are back where they belong (or in evidence lockers heading to their rightful owners), and maybe, just maybe, a batch of Future Inmates of America just learned the hard way that crime in Illinois doesn’t pay — it just gets you a very expensive orange jumpsuit and a permanent criminal record before you’re old enough to buy a lottery ticket.
Shout-out to the Springfield Police Department for the textbook response. You turned what these clowns thought was a quick score into the shortest criminal careers on record.
Criminals gonna crime. But thank God they’re almost always this stupid.