Breaking shatterproof glass only nets him a bigger headache

Shatter a basketball backboard in college or the NBA and you’ll probably end up on the evening’s ESPN highlight reel.

But all Jacob Valline got was a really bad headache and a nasty knot on his forehead.

That’s because Valline’s feat was cracking shatterproof glass while being held in a jail cell in Elko, Nev.

Elko County Sheriff Jim Pitts told the Los Angeles Times that the 29-year-old Valline continually bashed his head into an Elko County Jail holding cell’s glass until it broke.

“We’re having the glass guy come in today to give us an estimate,” Pitts told the Times on Monday. “I don’t know what one of these things costs.”

Valline was arrested last week in downtown Elko for obstructing an Elko police officer. “A man he was with was detained and he refused to leave and got in the middle of things,” Pitts said.

People who are arrested are often placed in one of the holding cells, which have shatterproof glass fronts. Valline was in a holding cell for a short time when he suddenly became enraged.

He began yelling and hitting the window, then he bashed his head into the glass until the glass cracked, Pitts said.

“He was pretty intoxicated,” Pitts told The Times. “The next morning he felt pretty awful. Then we told him what he did the night before. He didn’t even remember it. He was pretty apologetic.”

Nonetheless, the incident led to a charge of damage to jail property, on top of the original charge of obstructing an officer.

Pitts says he doubts this play would end up on any best-of-the sheriff’s-department highlight reel.

This is the second time an inmate managed to break the supposedly shatterproof glass since he became sheriff two years ago, he said.

“The other guy did it with his hands,” he said. “But this one used his head. That had to have hurt.”

ALSO:

FBI reportedly was watching Alabama bunker hostage-taker

Texas judge faces ‘court of inquiry’ into wrongful conviction

Groups fight over Boy Scouts’ ban on gays with a petition and prayer