FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – A Sanford woman was arrested earlier this week after deputies said she admitted to walking out of a Palm Coast Walmart with a shopping cart full of stolen goods, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
In a release, deputies said they were called to the business on Monday around 6:26 p.m. to investigate a reported theft.
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According to the sheriff’s office, the caller explained that the woman — later identified as Amber McCann, 30 — had “passed all points of sale and refused to show her receipt for a cart full of items.”
McCann reportedly moved the approximately $1,030 in stolen goods to a vehicle before fleeing on foot after realizing someone was watching her, the release shows.
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Upon arrival, deputies said they found the vehicle, which still had the stolen items in the back seat. They then spotted the woman walking toward the store.
After deputies made contact with McCann, she admitted that she’d carried a loaded cart full of stolen items to a car, claiming that it was just a random car she found, the release states. She also claimed that she stuck her purse inside when she saw law enforcement arriving.
According to investigators, McCann told them she was playing a game called “21,” which involves a person grabbing as much merchandise as they can from a store and walking out without paying — all the while trying to not get caught.
[WATCH BODY-CAMERA FOOTAGE OF THE INCIDENT IN THE MEDIA PLAYER BELOW. CAUTION: VIDEO CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.]
“Well, I did it one other time and this time, but I got caught this time,” McCann can be heard saying in body-camera footage released by the sheriff’s office. “So now, I’ve gotta figure out where my purse is and where my merchandise is because now, I’ve gotta give all my merchandise back to Walmart.”
“Well, it’s not really a game,” a deputy tells her.
“It is a game!” McCann responds.
“To you,” the deputy states. “That’s theft.”
“It’s — it’s — it’s fun, too. It’s really fun!” McCann replies.
“Oh, going to jail is fun,” the deputy says.
McCann was taken into custody, though she soon changed her story and said that the car hadn’t been random, but it in fact belonged to her boyfriend, deputies explained.
“My boyfriend doesn’t know that I steal. And he doesn’t know that I put all this (expletive) in the car, neither,” McCann says. “So I’m gonna be really in trouble with him, but that’s the thing.”
While removing the stolen merchandise from the car, deputies discovered a “partially burnt marijuana cigarette” inside the vehicle’s center console, investigators said. In addition, they said they found a digital scale, hashish, a glass pipe with burnt residue, and empty baggies of marijuana, methamphetamine and alprazolam.
Inside of a locked safe, the deputies found several 1-ounce silver bars and rounds, copper bars, and a 1-gram platinum bar, the release says.
McCann was ultimately arrested and faces charges of grand theft, marijuana possession, hashish possession, alprazolam possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, and trafficking in methamphetamine. She is held on bond of $34,000.
“If she really thought she was playing a shoplifting game, she lost to our deputies and observant citizens,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “Yet again, a ‘see-something, say-something,’ caller directly contributed to the arrest of a thief and drug trafficker. Another out-of-town resident ‘just stealing material things’ from a big box store learned the hard way we enforce the laws in Flagler County and it’s illegal to steal.”
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