Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Police: Man pretended to be officer, stayed at woman's house

Haha! I was perusing the Statesman once more to find an interesting article to write on and came across this gold mine... A man arrested for impersonating an officer and his story. The story was covered by Isadora Vail for the Austin American Statesman, (published online on 4/28/10) directed toward anyone who thumbs through the general weekly news section. I found it pretty entertaining.

A 57 year-old man by the name Lance Henington was arrested last week for impersonating a public servant, (which is a third-degree felony) and was jailed with a 15,000 dollar bail. Ouch. The report says he arrived by taxi at a woman's apartment in northwest Austin, as she was speaking to police about her stolen vehicle. After they left, he convinced her he was an "undercover" cop working on a larger case that might lead to the retrieval of her stolen vehicle. He stated that it was a dangerous case and that he'd need to stay with her to ensure her safety. Yikes.

One of the funniest parts of the write-up was this:

One of the neighbors had become suspicious on the legitimacy of his identity and approached him about the case, trying to get more information. He merely stated that he was working for the CIA, and was above the law. Shortly thereafter, he asked for a beer. Hahaha! He stayed with the woman for a few days last week, until she became suspicious during one of his trips to the courthouse (with her rental car, nonetheless) to work on "paperwork" for the case. She called the police department and they interviewed him upon his return...

Turns out he was never an officer, or was affiliated in any way with the department. He was a convicted felon, charged with spousal assault in 2007. Luckily no one was harmed in this man's shenanigans.

2 comments:

  1. My classmate Camron found a gem of a story to write about in his blog Texas / Local Govt. Blog. Apparently some guy tricked a woman in North Austin into believing that he was an officer and to let him stay with her for a while.

    Camron did a fine job pointing out the amusing highlights in this article and then laughing at them. He also conveys the information from the story fairly clearly and gives a good sense of what happened.

    Camron's style is reasonably good: his sentences make sense and there seem to be few spelling errors, which is a complete pleasure. His tone is lite and amusing which makes his blog quick and fun to read.

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  2. This blog was comical yet disturbing. The fact that a man was able to pose as law enforcement is hainous. I agree that you wrote this with a humourous tone which added to the irony in this situation, this was a tasteful way of discussing such a crazy incident. The poor woman that didnt even know got quite a surprise indeed.

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