Law enforcement agencies made a huge bust at a Bastrop County home last week, recovering twenty guns, one large marijuana plant, and a lot of beer. Like, a lot of beer. We’re talking $90,000 worth of beer, or 719 twelve-packs of Dos Equis.
719! Just look at it all:
“In my 20 years of law enforcement, I’ve never heard of that much alcohol being stolen,” Austin police Sergeant Maurice Forshee told the Austin American-Statesman. “It’s very abnormal.” No kidding.
During the bust, police arrested a pair of brothers—Byron and Wilmar Arana—on misdemeanor charges of distributing alcohol without a license, but now police believe a different man was behind the actual alcohol heist. On Friday, the Statesman reported police are looking for 22-year-old Achilles Salazar, who’s wanted on a felony theft charge. Salazar allegedly orchestrated the stolen beer scheme while he was employed at Austin’s Capital Beverage Distribution Company.
From September 5 through September 30, Salazar allegedly lifted beer while working at the distribution company. His employers were finally tipped off when they noticed Salazar getting to work very early and, uh, moving cases of beer with a forklift. His job only entailed stacking beer on pallets. As if the early morning forklift runs weren’t suspicious enough, on September 30, according to the affidavit, Salazar’s fellow employees spotted him moving three pallets of Dos Equis to a loading dock when there were no shipment pickups on the schedule. The strange activity was reported, and Salazar was soon fired. To top it off, employees later discovered social media posts selling the same brand and amount of beer that was stolen from the beverage distributor.
After the bust, suspects interviewed by police said that they bought the beer from a man who fit Salazar’s description who delivered the beer in a U-Haul truck (perfect for storing 719 cases of beer). In interviews with police, an employee at Capital Beverage said that Salazar had mentioned that he rented a U-Haul truck a week before he got canned, and suspects at the scene of the bust were able to identify Salazar from photos on his Facebook page.
For now, Salazar is still on the run. Actually, if history is any indication, he’s probably on a beer run. Stay thirsty, my friends.
Image courtesy of Flickr/Amy The Nurse.
