A Darwin Awards aspirant in Germany got caught after he a) sprayed graffiti on a train at lunchtime in front of a cop and b) tried to hobble away on crutches. He didn't get far.

As a pastime, graffiti enjoys the reputation for evading law enforcement with stealthy getaways under cover of the midnight dark. Subtract these two advantages, and chances for getting nipped by authorities exponentially rise.

And so it was for a devious eighteen-year-old youth in Hittfeld, in northern Germany, on Monday, when he began tagging a parked train in the local train station -- at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. An off-duty police officer from Harburg was sitting on the commuter train, the Metronom, waiting to head to work, when he saw the young man spraying "Fuck Cops" right outside his window. The officer got out of the train and yelled to the budding artist, "Stop! Don't move! Police!" And with that, the spray can fell to the ground and the perpetrator began to flee -- now take away the second advantage -- with a weighty cast on his leg and a pair of crutches.

"There's not too much else I can say" said Harburg police press secretary Matthias Rose, "but the young man was certainly caught after a few feet."

Things now will get worse for the graffiti man; his tagging days are likely over. Not only had he been nabbed several times before for other acts of graffiti vandalism, but he was currently on probation, awaiting a court hearing for property damage.

rjm


http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,,00.html