Attention shoplifters: an inability to hold her head up without help is a surefire sign that your accomplice isn’t up to the job.Enjoying a wee nip of beer from time to time doesn’t make you a bad father. Neither does using your child as a prop to attract or distract a person’s attention, as any single father whose ever gone to a public park in the summertime will tell you.Use your infant daughter to help hide the cache of beer you’ve just lifted from a grocery store, however, and a representative from Child Protective Services will likely show up at your doorstep. The future addition to CPS’ roster of clients in question is 2224-year-old Michael James Chandler. The Bremerton man was arrested over the weekend after he allegedly placed a quantity of beer inside the stroller containing his 2-month-old and attempted to leave without paying.Both the suspect and baby were stopped by the store manager before they made it out the front entrance. When the father again tried to leave, the manager held on to the stroller. In the ensuing tug-of-war, it fell on its side, touching off a Coen Brothers level of poor baby stewardship. Apparently panicked, the father tried to run away. Realizing that he’d left something, namely his infant daughter, our father-of-the-year candidate doubled back, then punched the manager in the face. And while those two wrestled each other on the grocery store linoleum, two men who had accompanied the suspect rushed into the store, grabbed the baby, then fled in a black Chevrolet.Following the botched robbery, they deposited the baby back with her mother, who confirmed that the suspect was indeed the baby’s father. He was eventually arrested pending charges of second-degree robbery.
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