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LA PLATA -- A La Plata man has been arrested for shoplifting an array of vegetables.
Steven Dillon was apprehended by shopping center security as he left a Safeway store on Crain Highway. He was carrying a black re-usable grocery bag full of potatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, mushrooms and an enormous eggplant.
Joe Mason of Hollywood, who works in the store’s produce department, noted that Dillon “was kinda creepy.” “He would pick up a vegetable and put it to his ear, nod his head and put it in the bag.” Mason went on to say that sometimes, after Dillon put it the vegetable to his ear, he jerked it away and stared at it, then slammed it down.
Store manager Carla Dorsey, a Patuxent resident, alerted shopping center security after watching Dillon over security cameras. “He had this really strange way of walking, like he was rocking in a rocking chair. Every now and then he’d look up at the ceiling, and it looked like he was talking to it.”
Dorsey is convinced that Dillon was listening to the vegetables. “Maybe he’s taking ‘when an onion rings, answer it’ literally,” she said.
Dillon is no stranger to those who work at this Safeway store. Dorsey said that he comes in every few days to buy celery and pears, and he always tells the cashiers, “I hate pears, but NASA steals my peaches.” Neither Mason nor Dorsey knew whether Dillon had ever bought peaches there. The produce he left the store with did not include celery or pears.
Sergeant Bill Clay of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office said that Dillon will be charged with shoplifting. Dillon’s criminal record includes other shoplifting arrests, as well as being a public nuisance, disturbing the peace, and breaking and entering.
In 2007, Dillon was arrested at a Wendy’s restaurant in Waldorf after demanding onion rings. When told that the restaurant did not sell onion rings, Dillon climbed over the counter and ran around the kitchen shouting “I hear you, I hear you, I’m coming!” He was charged with disturbing the peace and sentenced to six months’ probation. In 2009, Dillon was discovered in a La Plata homeowner’s kitchen. According to Clay, Dillon had covered the kitchen table with produce and was waving his hands over it as if he were conducting an orchestra. He pled guilty to breaking and entering and received a six-month jail sentence and three years’ probation.
Clay would not comment on the probability of conviction in this case, but did say that a psychiatrist had visited Dillon in jail. The district attorney was unavailable for comment.
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