Ice-Cream Bandits Are Caught Sticky-Handed

The police report was stark in its description of the perpetrators, but somehow they did not sound all that menacing:

“Suspect No. 1, male white, 10, 4-feet-9, 90 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes. Suspect No. 2, male white, 10, 4-feet-11, 85 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes . . . “

The crime: burglary. The motive: well, it was a hot Sunday afternoon, and there was all that ice cream in the freezer of the Horace Mann Elementary School on Charleville Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Using a knife, five boys unlocked the outside door, made their way inside and headed straight for the cafeteria, police said. But the intrusion set off a silent alarm, police rushed to the scene, and the youngsters were caught sticky-handed.

“It was just some ice creams on a stick,” Principal Arthur Fields said. “It’s no big thing, but the (security) company doesn’t know who’s in there.”

No arrests were made, but Assistant Principal Steve Fisher spoke to the parents of the boys involved.

“It’s really not considered vandalism or something of a more serious nature,” Fisher said. “Based on the age of the students involved, I think they learned a lesson, and it was an effective lesson for them to learn.”