Sometimes, Things Just Jump Out at You

And won't leave your brain... This is one such story:

A Suspect With an Incriminating Tattoo Saves Face

It's a simple story, really. Police have a relatively minor crime to solve and they follow standard procedure. They get a description of the perpetrator from the victim and try to match that with known criminals. One of the things the police always ask is "Did the perpetrator have any distinguishing marks?"

In this case, the victim told them that he did... a tattoo of a lightning bolt on his face. Well, this eventually led them to a suspect (one Dylan Vok) who was identified by the victim of a robbery in a photo "line-up":

"so the authorities pulled Mr. Vok’s police photo, as well as ones of several other white men without tattoos, and they used Photoshop to paste Mr. Vok’s tattoo on all of their faces. They showed the array of photos to the victim, who picked Mr. Vok."

This is pretty standard procedure. The problem is, it turns out, that Mr. Vok was nowhere near the scene of the crime on Staten Island at the time the crime was committed. He was in Detroit. And, it turns out, Mr. Vok could prove that through records of his use of a food-stamp card.

Yes, Mr. Vok was being assisted in his daily life by the government. And this saved him a lot of trouble. In a sense, Mr. Vok's story  is uplifting...

"Mr. Vok found his way to Detroit as it was crumbling toward bankruptcy [in 2011, months before the robbery], and said he managed to buy a house for less than $2,000 at an auction. He found work gardening and, later, exploring new technologies in self-sustaining agriculture and permaculture."

I won't ask how Mr. Vok, obviously destitute, decided to head for Detroit, find and buy a $2000 house. It is just fortunate he did. Because it saved him from going to prison.