Homeless Man Arrested for Stealing Bread

And Other Homeless News

Every once in a while I do a google news search to see what the latest homeless news is. The top search article headline tonight read: "Homeless man arrested for stealing bread" and the blurb read: "homeless, and presumably hungry, Carlos Salvador allegedly tried to steal rolls from a Freeport convenience store on Thanksgiving day...". Underneath the blurb is another blue underlined link that read: "Female clerk tackles homeless man stealing bread." What are your first thoughts reading that? Mine were that the Press is trying to make readers feel sorry for the poor, hungry homeless guy and to dislike the heartless store clerk, in addition to the police who arrested him. Of course there is more to the story than that.

When I clicked on the first link it took me to a Newsday.com story. The headline read: "Homeless man burns store worker in failed robbery." There is a large photo of Carlos captioned with the blurb mentioned above, which continues to tell readers the clerk tried to stop Carlos from stealing the rolls and "he allegedly threw hot soup on her". Reporter Nia-Malika Henderson fails to tell readers where Freeport is, but I assume it is not in the Bahamas. Henderson does inform readers that the 28 year old Carlos is a citizen of Guatemala who has "four prior incidents, including drunken driving and larceny charges." Theft of a bicycle valued at 200 hundred dollars cost him "15 days in jail". She also tells us Carlos would not give an address to the police, lied about his name and "court documents" listed "several different birth dates". Police investigators plan to contact the Immigration department about the case.