In a trully bizarre heist that may very well be the premise for the next Pain & Gain-style dark comedy, three absolute buffoons allegedly stole a shark from an aquarium.
Amazingly, they bundled up the shark in a stroller and disguised it as a baby.
We want to go ahead and reassure you that the shark was found safe and alive. But the twists and turns in this story are almost as unbelievable as the crime itself.
On Saturday, a shark was snatched from the San Antonio Aquarium in Texas.
As the aquarium shared on its Facebook page: "one of our employees reported seeing suspicious activity from a group of three people near one of our interactive shark touch tanks."
As you can see in the video, the suspicious activity was that the three alleged thieves caught a small shark with a net and stole her.
"Our General Manager, Jen Spellman, caught up with the suspects in the parking lot," the post reveals. "And was denied access to searching the vehicle and the stroller."
We can only imagine how that went down.
"Our 16-inch long Horn Shark was stolen from our tide pool exhibit while the attendant was assisting other guests," the aquarium reveals.
They continue, writing: "Surveillance video shows the suspects staking out the pool for over an hour for their opportunity."
"Surveillance footage also indicates that the suspects brought in a net to capture our shark," the page mentions.
"After grabbing our shark and placing her into a wet towel, they entered into one of our back rooms where they took a bucket that was half-full of bleach cleaning solution (used for disinfecting our tools)," the page explains. "And dumped it all into our cold water exhibit filtration system."
In case you are worried about some absolute monsters dumping a bleach cleaning solution into the aquarium"s filtration system, it was caught and the bleach was neutralized.
"This caused harm to multiple tanks, all of the tanks on that system, it is all connected. Including our seahorses, baby seahorses, jellies, and more."
According to the aquarium, had staff taken even a minute longer to notice that something was wrong, countless sea life from the aquarium would have perished.
"They then," the post reveals. "Took the sanitation bucket to aide in the transportation of the shark into the stroller, quickly exited up the stairs and out into the parking lot."
But the aquarium was already on their case, even though they were refused permission to search the trio"s belongings.
"We worked closely with Leon Valley and San Antonio Police Departments to recover our shark and apprehend the suspects," the page explains.
And there is good news!
"They located our shark, brought our Assistant Husbandry Director, Jamie Shank, there to identify Miss Helen and bring her back with us."
"Ammon Covino the owner of the San Antonio Aquarium wants to publicly show his appreciation to them for all the hard work they did in locating our shark," the post reads. "And allowing us to bring Miss Helen the Horn Shark back home."
Miss Helen might technically be considered evidence, but she"s also a sharknapping victim.
"We value the lives of all of our animals and take pride in the care that we can give them," the page says. "As well as the education that we can provide for the general public about these treasured species."
Here is Miss Helen, safe and sound.
"We are astonished but so grateful that she survived this catastrophic event," the aquarium writes.
"This guy knew what he was doing," they write begrudgingly. "Or she wouldn"t have survived."
A 38-year-old man who has not yet been identified has been arrested for taking the shark.
Police believe that he was seeking to replace a previous horn shark, who had died. Police found an aquarium at his home.
Investigators intend to arrest and charge the remaining two suspects when they are located.
This is a bizarre case. Despite some upsetting twists (though thankfully, Miss Helen is okay), it"s an entertaining story.
We can"t wait for the inevitable movie. We"re just surprised that, unlike Pain & Gain, this story won"t take place in Florida.
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