Believe it or not, I can come up with a few reasons why one might walk into a lingerie store empty handed and walk out with a display mannequin. Maybe you work for the mannequin company and the store people asked you to take it. Maybe it’s someone’s idea of a harmless prank. Or maybe you work for a competing lingerie store, you know how much those mannequins can cost (up to 5 grand, it says here) and you took it as a that’ll learn ’em revenge type thing. But when you walk out with a mannequin dressed in a brown wig, a pink spandex dress and rhinestone stilettos and then the police find you in bed with it, things get a little harder to explain. And by a little, I of course mean a lot.
According to an arrest warrant, officers responded to Hollywood Hustler at 1400 Church Street for a report of a theft that had just occurred.
At the store, an employee told police that a man who appeared intoxicated walked into the store just after midnight, grabbed a mannequin just inside the door adorned with lingerie and took it outside into the parking lot. In the process, the man knocked the mannequin’s left arm off.The employee said she walked into the parking lot and argued with the man for several minutes until he put the mannequin into the bed of a white Toyota Tacoma and drove away.
The employee, the warrant continues, told police the mannequin was valued at $5,000, not including the merchandise it wore.
Using the truck’s license plate, police learned the vehicle was registered to a woman who lives in the 500 block of Jones Pointe in Old Hickory.
When police visited the woman’s home, the warrant states, they learned Wade was inside the home.
Officers found him in bed with the stolen mannequin which was missing its left arm and wearing all the merchandise it was last seen sporting.
We don’t know who this woman is or even more importantly, how Christopher Wade, who has been charged with theft, explained this to her.
In case you’re wondering, the mannequin is going to be ok. At last report she was living in a police evidence room as the investigation continued. Her arm reattachment surgery should be a complete success because her body parts are magnetic, and perhaps most important of all, there seem to have been no allegations of her having been assaulted in any way beyond the aforementioned amputation.
