Cooking oil capers continue, vehicles vanish, and police get a strange text message
The Boston Globe · Emily Sweeney ·
Two men are charged with stealing cooking oil, police respond to a mysterious text message, and other odd tales from local police and fire departments.
Every day, police officers respond to reports of all sorts of events and nonevents, most of which never make the news. Here is a sampling of lesser-known — but no less noteworthy — incidents from police blotters in our communities.
GREASE IS THE WORD
The Globe has reported on the theft of used cooking oil before (including a recent incident in Beverly), and here’s another one for you. This time, a pair of alleged grease thieves struck in Worcester County. At approximately 5:37 a.m. on Oct. 28, police responded to a report of two individuals in a van who appeared to be taking used cooking oil from a dumpster behind the Jasmine restaurant in Auburn. Officers checked the area and later located the suspicious van down the street behind Chili’s. “Inside the van were large containers used to collect cooking oil, including one that was already partially filled,” police wrote. According to police, one of the suspects, a 46-year-old Worcester resident, had an active warrant for his arrest issued by the US Marshals Service out of Virginia. “Now, we’re certainly not in the business of giving career advice to fugitives,” police wrote, “but if federal authorities are looking for you, driving around Auburn at 5:30 in the morning stealing cooking oil might not be the best strategy for staying under the radar.” The two men — the 46-year-old and a 19-year-old, who was also from Worcester — were arrested and charged with larceny under $1,200, attempted larceny, and conspiracy, police said. “Usually, a trip to Chili’s ends with us taking a Triple Dipper to go,” police quipped. “This time, we took a wanted fugitive to go.”
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