A man grabbed a kitten from the adoption area of a Maryland pet store, then allegedly tried to use her to rob a nearby bank.
But it was far from the purr-fect crime — police were on the scene in minutes, and the kitten, named Magnolia, came through it all unharmed.
Security camera video shows a man wearing a light-colored T-shirt and black beanie walking into Pet Supplies Plus on Baltimore Avenue in Beltsville, Maryland. Seconds later, he ran out clutching a black-and-white kitten.
Witnesses said he kept running straight for the PNC Bank in the same shopping center.
Stephanie Stullich of Beltsville Community Cats rescue was nearby when she got a call from a very alarmed store employee around 10:30 a.m. They said someone used the key hanging nearby to open the cat adoption area and take 3-month-old Magnolia.
Stullich drove over immediately.
“Saw all of these police cars, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a heck of a response for a stolen cat,’ but then I realized they all were going down to the bank,” she said. “They came back out a few minutes later and said, ‘Yes, there is a cat inside the bank.’ Apparently he went into the bank with the cat in his arms, and he walked up to a bank employee and said, ‘Can you hold this?’ And then he wrote a note and handed it to a bank teller and it said, essentially, ‘Give me all your cash.’”
Prince George’s County Police confirmed they took a man into custody at the bank. Employees at the pet store said he’d been coming in nearly every day for a couple weeks, always making a beeline for the kitten.
“Came in and saw that none of my team was nearby the front, and he just went right to her and ran right on out,” said Aaron Kurkowski, the store manager.
Magnolia is still available for adoption.
“She is looking for a law-abiding citizen with a lot of love in their heart,” Stullich said.
