Woman attempting to 'dine and dash' falls through restaurant ceiling in front of waiting cops

A woman who attempted a "dine and dash" in an expensive restaurant in Canada ended up falling through the restaurant ceiling while trying to escape - only to be greeted by waiting police officers.

Per the Daily Star, the incident occurred earlier this year in March.

However, it was only last week (October 29), that footage of the incident was released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as part of an effort towards transparency, giving citizens an insight into their work.

Check out the footage below:

The woman - who has remained unnamed - ordered and ate her meal as normal, but when the check arrived she attempted to flee without paying.

Heading to the restroom, the woman climbed through an air vent and was still crawling around in the restaurant's ventilation system when police officers arrived on the scene.

In the meantime, the RCMP police officers were devising a strategy as to how best to remove the woman from the ventilation systems.

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Suddenly, there was no need to manually remove her as she fell straight through the ceiling landing right at the feet of a shocked mountie.

The restaurant, as well as the woman at the center of the incident, has remained unnamed. It is, however, located in the Western Canadian city of Burnaby, just east of Vancouver.

"We got a call from a manager of a restaurant up near Metrotown stating that one of their patrons didn’t want to pay their bill," RCMP Corporal Michael Kalanj told local radio station News 1130.

"So, they went to the ladies’ room and began to climb into the vents in the ceiling," Corporal Salani said.

"And, as you can see in the video, she dropped in on us and made it easy for us to find her."

The RCMP explained the woman was not badly injured and did not need further medical assistance.

Furthermore, the restaurant decided against pressing criminal charges after taking into account her "life circumstances and struggles."

"We had some stern conversations with the lady and took some other avenues, which we won’t go into because there are no charges," Corporal Kalanj said.

He added: "We’ll take it as a reminder to everyone that this is not safe, first and foremost. She could have gotten hurt really badly in this situation."