When Charlie Beavers broke into a plasma center one Saturday night in Pensacola, Florida, he didn’t get much —primarily because he didn’t get too far.
Now, to a normal, rational mind, breaking into a plasma center might not make much sense. But to Charlie, it seemed like a good idea at the time. So after checking out the building, Charlie removed the top from an air vent on the roof and entered feet first. Great, he thought. I’ll just slide down this air vent, steal everything in sight, and make a clean getaway.
His master plan was going flawlessly until the shaft did a nine-foot vertical drop, causing him to lose his grip. Charlie shot down the duct at a high rate of speed. The experience must have seemed like a ride at the fair— but the ride came to a sudden and painful stop.
Charlie’s air shaft ended approximately three feet above a cross beam that separated two offices. And Charlie reached terminal velocity at about the same time he reached the cross beam. With a force hard enough to break through two ceilings (one leg on each side of the beam), he came to a crushing halt.
Charlie’s legs were now in separate rooms. His arms were wedged tightly inside the shaft, straight up over his head. He was snugly straddling a cross beam.
Charlie spent a long weekend waiting for help. It arrived two days later, in the form of the police responding to a “breaking and entering” call. But then the police had to wait for the fire department to come and extricate Charlie from his predicament. As the luckless burglar was led hobbling away, Officer Pete Bell noticed that “part of his anatomy had swollen up to grapefruit size. And being from Florida, we know our grapefruits.”
Beavers was arrested and charged with breaking and entering. Most officers on the scene agreed that Charlie had served his sentence long before the police ever arrived.
Oh, did we mention that it rained all weekend, right down the shaft and onto Charlie’s face?