“It’s not every day you see a giant cartoon dog go on the rampage after trying to break into a prison,” said a prison spokesman of the incident on May 1.  Nor is it often that a story beginning with a quote like that one gets better, but today is apparently a special day.

The giant cartoon dog in question was Snoopy, and he was reportedly trying to break into the prison on the Isle of Wight in the UK in order to spring one of his relatives.  Two men were involved in the break-in attempt, and while the other one should have been dressed as Woodstock, so far there is no evidence of that.  Nor is there any explanation yet for the Snoopy costume itself, although it seems clear that it was not intended to help the pair keep a low profile.

“They weren’t exactly inconspicuous,” the spokesman said of the two men who tried to break down a door while one was wearing a Snoopy costume, “but they were taken seriously because they appeared to have a gun.  They caused a real commotion,” he continued, “and it was only later they were found to be armed with a water pistol.”

When the two were unable to accomplish the break-in, the report said, they went on to “hurl concrete missiles” at prison officers’ cars.  Whatever that means, exactly, it did not help accomplish their goal.

 Not that they were going to accomplish that goal anyway, because it turned out that they had the wrong prison, or at least the wrong unit.  The man’s relative was in a different facility a few hundred meters away.  “This has got to rank as one of the worst attempted jail breaks ever,” the spokesperson added unnecessarily.

Police said the two men, ages 43 and 21, were arrested and were being held on suspicion of “criminal damage.”  The report did not say which of the two men was wearing the Snoopy outfit.

Link: Telegraph