When police asked a man what he was doing inside a Burger King restaurant in Greenwood, Ind., hours before opening, he had a candid answer.
“I’m a burglar,” police quoted Anthony Nonte, 18, as saying.
Not only did Nonte confess to officers, he had remained at the store while an assistant manager ran for help after finding Nonte at the restaurant, police said.
Nonte told police he had stopped at the Burger King about 1 a.m. Tuesday intending to meet a friend.
Finding the place empty and not finding his friend, Nonte said he pried open the drive-through window and squeezed inside.
Nonte said he tried but failed to open the store safe with a spatula. Then he tried to freeze the safe by spraying it with a fire extinguisher so he could pop it open.
That didn’t work either, but it did provide police with evidence. The white powdery substance sprayed from the extinguisher preserved Nonte’s tennis shoe prints, creating a trail of his footsteps for investigators.
DEAD WOMAN WALKING
Lois Gates is alive and well, but she would be better off if the federal government would quit insisting that she is dead.
The Social Security Administration informed Gates of her purported demise early last month, when the Ft. Worth resident phoned about a $731 monthly check that never arrived.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but according to the computers, you died in June of 1997,” Gates was told.
“I said, `You’re kidding. I’m sitting here talking to you,’ ” said Gates, 65.
The nearly departed Gates soon learned that the Treasury Department had reached into her son-in-law’s bank account to reclaim the money from her July check. Gates deposits her checks in the account because she doesn’t have one of her own.
Social Security provided emergency funds to cover the missing August check, but Gates is still out the $731 snatched from the bank account, forcing her to put off paying some bills. And she is still listed as dead, forcing her to endure a lot of good-natured gallows humor.
“My daughter says my color’s good,” Gates said with a laugh.
