It's often said that crime doesn't pay, but rarely do we get to see that sentiment in action as clearly as we did this week when a 29-year-old woman came crashing through the ceiling of a convenience store in Alberta, Canada.
The woman - who has not been named - had hidden in the storeroom in order to evade police, who showed up after she and her boyfriend were observed behaving suspiciously in the shop. Unfortunately for her, as security footage shows, her attempts to avoid law enforcement were not at all successful, and her plans to avoid capture quite literally came crashing down around her.
The incident happened on Monday afternoon at the King Street Reddi Mart, and began when the woman's boyfriend - an unnamed 28-year-old man - attempted to purchase something at the counter.
According to the store owner, Paul Chauhan, the man tried to pay for a canned drink by tapping his credit card on the machine, but was declined several times. Chauhan suggested he swipe the card instead, at which point the man said that it was his girlfriend's and that she was at work, so he couldn't contact her.
The store owner thought nothing of this until he observed the man later on outside the building with someone who appeared to be his girlfriend. Suspecting that the man was lying, and the card was not, in fact, his girlfriend's, Chauhan called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to report a suspected stolen credit card.
When the RCMP turned up at around 1.17pm, all hell broke loose.
The man immediately reacted violently to the police presence, and the couple brawled with the officer in an attempt to flee the scene.
"As the RCMP member attempted to detain both suspects, the male pushed the female suspect at the officer," RCMP spokesperson Const. Shelley Nasheim said in a press release.
The woman somehow got away, leading the RCMP officer to tackle the man. However, rather than leave the store, the 28-year-old ran into the backroom. With no other way out, she decided to climb a ladder into the crawlspace above the ceiling tiles.
Obviously, though, the ceiling could not hold her weight, and she plummeted down into the store below as more officers arrived to deal with the situation.
This news report from CBS Los Angeles shows the moment it all went wrong:
"The business owner provided valuable assistance to the responding RCMP member which was instrumental in helping with the apprehension of both suspects," said Nasheim.
The couple were eventually detained and charged with using a stolen credit card, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, attempting to disarm a police officer, and resisting arrest from someone aiding the police. Thankfully, though, nobody was badly injured during the debacle.
"Thank God nobody got hurt," said Chauhan. "We have two less people in the world who are bad."
