Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/23/red_hot_shoplifter/
Red hot chilli peppers floor Bristol shoplifter
Unwisely scoffs booty, collapses, vomits, cops a cuffing
Posted in Bootnotes, 23rd August 2012 15:04 GMT
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A Bristol shoplifter got a shock lesson in the awesome power of the Scotch Bonnet after ill-advisedly deciding to scoff a handful of the napalm peppers he'd swiped from a store, before attempting to leg it from the scene.
Marcus Banwell, 39, barely got outside Singh Stores in the St Paul's district of the city, because "within a matter of seconds" of swallowing his booty, he was "doubled over, coughing and being sick", as his local paper [1] put it.
Coppers quickly slapped the cuffs on the hapless and disabled thief, who was found to be carrying another four peppers, "crack cocaine and a small amount of heroin", plus a clarinet he'd pinched from another shop.
When hauled before Bristol magistrates, Banwell admitted "possessing two class A drugs, three shop thefts, receiving stolen goods and breaching his licence from a previous prison sentence".
He was sentenced to six weeks' jail for the possession and theft raps, and eight weeks for the breach of licence, which will give his stomach a total of 14 weeks to recover on a diet of prison food.
As the aforementioned report notes, Scotch Bonnets have a Scoville heat rating of 100,000 to 350,000, on a par with the feared Habanero chilli. Banwell can consider himself lucky, however, to have not swiped peppers from Fire Foods of Lincolnshire, which in 2010 unleashed [2] a deadly pepper cultivar rating an awesome 1,176,182 Scoville units.
The previous record was held by the bhut jolokia, at 1,041,427. ®