Grandmother Charged in Baby Jesus Theft

[tocqueville]

Fri Dec 2, 9:27 PM ET

EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. - Virginia Voiers thought she was taking part in a rambunctious holiday custom, but a carriage driver thought differently and called police when he saw the 70-year-old grandmother stealing the baby Jesus from the city's nativity scene.

Voiers was ticketed for misdemeanor theft by an officer who quickly caught up with her van after she foisted the statue.

"It was a lark, it wasn't any serious stealing," Voiers told the Lovely County Citizen newspaper of Eureka Springs. "My granddaughter commented that no one had taken the baby Jesus this year and said, 'Grandma?' I said, 'Oh, what the heck.'"

Usually, the baby Jesus is returned by the thief. Voiers said her Saturday caper was the first time she'd taken anything from the nativity.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051203/ap_on_fe_st/grandmother_stolen_jesus

[...of J.Temperance]

1. You know the world has turned upside down when you start thinking

That ACTUAL things that have happened and are being reported read like things that appear in The Onion.

[MercutioATC]

2. Well, she DID steal it...

[tocqueville]

3. well it was a local custom

I can't understand that they even threaten her with jail...

[MercutioATC]

5. Oh, it's a local custom? Then I guess it's O.K.

:eyes:

[tocqueville]

6. read the story

"I didn't know we had a tattletale downtown," said Voiers, who is also a Sunday school teacher at a Methodist church. She said she told her pastor what happened.

"He said, 'Bless you, child. Go and sin no more,'" she said, and added that he asked, "'You didn't tell them you are a Methodist, did you?'"

[MercutioATC]

7. Oh, so a pastor at a DIFFERENT church "absolved" her?

...I'm running out of sarcastic comments...please forgive me...

:eyes:


(on edit) It wasn't even a church that set up the nativity, it was a local sorority that set it up in a band shell. They've had problems for years with people stealing pieces of the nativity and installed a security camera linked to the police station this year.

http://www.eurekaspringstimesecho.com/articles/2005/12/02/news/mw3.txt

How does a Methodist priest making light of the situaton have anything to do with it?

[shenmue]

4. Crime wave!

Soon she'll be on every news show.

"Is your church safe?!"

:rofl:

[dweller]

8. quick call *dr.Phil to intervene!

nf/t


dp

[f-bush]

9. WTF

Unless the courts start to mess with her, don't we have more serious things to worry about. I just hope and pray, that this lady doesn't get dumped on in this Christo-fascist culture that the bushbots and co. have spawned. This has bought me to another thought-I have worked in the "Church" all my life and because of these right wingnut, fundy morons, I have never been so ashamed to call myself Christian. I just hope that the faith based liberal community (me included) can effectively preach and live the social Gospel of Christ and undo the havoc and injury these idiots have caused. I know this got off the subject, but hey-it's late at night and I was thinkin'-Peace-TacomaMikeC

[ashling]

12. This is serious

what if she had taken that baby jesus to Aruba?

[JVS]

10. Was there a tasering involved?

[ashling]

11. My daughter played baby Jesus

at the Methodist Church nativity scene in the Woodlands 20 years ago.