Burglary Suspect Won’t Get Prize for Smarts, Police Say

Breaking in was the easy part for Robert Laughton.

An unemployed contractor, he knew just how to peel back a rooftop air-conditioning vent so he could drop down into the Reseda liquor store.

Getting back out, however, was another matter.

The doors and windows of Rick’s Liquor were barred, and Laughton could not reach the hole he had cut in the ceiling.

So as the store’s siren alarm blared in the background, Laughton dialed 911. He confessed his crime and asked Los Angeles police if they would come let him out, please.

He’d wait.

When officers arrived early Sunday, Laughton was sitting on the floor, smoking a Benson & Hedges and sipping a warm can of Coors Extra Gold.

But officers, too, had a problem: how to get him out to arrest him?

They suggested that Laughton poke around the store, and he found the answer, barely 15 feet from where he had sat waiting for police--a ladder that could have made his escape as easy as his entry.

“He wasn’t the smartest burglar in the world, let’s put it that way,” Sgt. Roger Ferguson said. “Usually burglars don’t come gift-wrapped like this. We took him from one cell and put him in another. Now he’s a guest in our jail.”

The botched burglary began about 3:30 a.m. Sunday. After climbing onto the roof from a trash container, Laughton, 23, apparently cut through the vent, squeezed through the two-foot opening and dropped about 10 feet into the store, landing between the Milk Duds and the La Victoria salsa.

His landing set off the store’s motion-sensing alarm. After frantically searching for a way out, Laughton apparently “came to the horrible conclusion that he could not get out,” Ferguson said.

Police said the 911 operator did not believe she was really talking to a burglar asking to be arrested. Ferguson said Laughton had to insist, “I’m in the liquor store. I’ll give up.”

He was finishing his second beer by the time officers pulled up about 3:50 a.m.

As police led the handcuffed Laughton away, he promised store owner Duane Jaffe that he would pay for the beers. With refrigerators full of ice cold imported beer and shelves of expensive liquors, Laughton had picked the two warm Coors off a display rack.

On Sunday afternoon, store co-managers Anthony and Gigi McCray got rid of the ladder that might have helped Laughton escape. But even with it, they said, Laughton would have made off only with snacks and booze--all the money was locked in a hidden safe.