OPINION:
A street vendor in California was shot in the leg by a trio of teens who were able to escape identification and flee under cover of the medical face masks their state mandates they wear.
How lucky for the criminals that face coverings are oh-so-demanded these days.
It helps with the getaways, dontcha see.
The teens were ultimately captured — but it’s really due to their own stupidity, not to descriptions by witnesses of their facial or physical features.
This is the story: A gang of teens approached a vendor in Fresno and harassed him, roughed him up, tried to steal from him. The vendor ran and one of the teens shot him in the leg. A witness helped the vendor to safety. Meanwhile, responding police were told the three suspects, all male, all seemingly under the age of 18, jumped into a dark-colored sedan that appeared to be driven by a teenage girl.
“Witnesses weren’t able to provide police with good descriptions of the boys, since all three were wearing medical masks,” Fox 26 News wrote.
“All three assailants were seen getting in a dark-colored sedan that fled the area. All three were wearing blue medical face masks,” The Fresno Bee wrote.
About three hours later, California Highway Patrol traffic officers received a report of a reckless driver on the road — and voila, it was the dark-colored sedan. When police made the stop, they found the gun in the back seat — and given there were three youngsters in the vehicle, in the general age of the suspects in the crime against the vendor, put two and two together and made the arrest.
In other words: If these stupid kids hadn’t driven erratically, and hadn’t driven erratically in the very car that matched the description of the thugs who attacked the vendor, they would’ve gotten away free and easy.
They wouldn’t have been caught.
Their face masks would’ve sheltered them from the police-arresting storm.
The very face masks California mandates they wear while in public would have served as sort of accomplices to their criminal activities.
And that is a serious problem with mandated face masks — the criminals are loving it.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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