Usually when I run across news stories about “ninja” criminals, it turns out the idiot is dressed in black with a hoodie or bandanna mask or something more “ninjaesque” than really “ninja.”
Not so in this case, in which our not-so-stealthy subject appears to have been in honest-to-goodness ninja costume complete with sword…
Video at link:
http://www.wtae.com/r/27653751/detail.html
UNIONTOWN, Pa. – Police said a man dressed like a ninja and carrying a sword damaged 11 cars before attempting to stab a man early Sunday morning in South Union Township, Fayette County.
Channel 4 Action News’ Ashlie Hardway reported that car windows were smashed in the Braddock Avenue area between midnight and 1 a.m. The vandal was described as a man wearing dark clothing and a dark mask, according to a police report.
“I peeked out my bedroom window. There was someone out by her car,” said Jennifer Barry, whose aunt owns one of the damaged vehicles. “He was holding a long object in his hands, and I was like, ‘You know, there is someone out there.’ Soon enough, the alarm went off and he took off.”
Dark surveillance video shows a shadowy figure breaking a car window before the alarm went off.
“I actually saw him first, and he was trying to sneak through the yard. He heard me say, ‘I found him,’ because my window was down,” neighbor Chelsey Cunningham said.Barry called her friend and neighbor, Santino Guzzo, who said he came to the scene and confronted the man after spotting him hiding in the yard of a home on Elm Street.
“He says, ‘I have a sword.’ That’s when I said, ‘I have a gun,’ and he tried to stab me through my car window,” Guzzo said.
The masked man then shattered the rear window of his car with the sword and ran away, said Guzzo, who only suffered a superficial cut. Witnesses said the man ran down a hillside, into a fence, through more fences and a garden, and then down some steps, where he leaped over a hillside and vandalized more vehicles.
Evidence that was left behind included blood on the cars, tools that were used to damage the vehicles and, “like, a fifth of liquor. He dropped it when he fell over the fence,” Cunningham said.
Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call police at 724-439-7111.
“It’s awful what happened, but it’s goofy the way he did it,” Cunningham said with a laugh. “A ninja? With a sword just right out?”
“I could see if he was just doing the damage, but being dressed as a ninja is a little out there,” Barry said.
You really have to watch the video to get a full appreciation of the amount of “ninjutsu-fail” exhibited by this ninja.
- Caught on video
- Failed to kill with a sword (Fortunately!)
- Stumbled into a railing, then fell down steps
- Left evidence (blood and tools) behind
What’s really crazy is the list of “ninja-related” crimes the reporter recounts near the end of the story.
Is Pittsburgh the new Ground Zero for Ninja? “Pittsburgh-no-mono” just doesn’t have the same mythic ring to it…