Police: Delaware Shoplifter Steals $11K Worth of Cigarettes from Walgreens

Police in Delaware are looking for a suspect accused of getting away with a mountain of loot from a local pharmacy.

“We need your eagle eyes to identify a shoplifter who puffed away with over $11,000 worth of cigarettes from Walgreens at 4575 New Linden Hill Road in Wilmington on June 13, 2024. Yes, you read that right—eleven thousand dollars’ worth of smokes!” Delaware State Police wrote in a social media post on Saturday.

The agency said an employee was busy with another task in another area of the store when the suspect allegedly went behind the counter and took the items.

Images show the suspect, wearing a red shirt, red shorts, and black shoes, pushing what appears to be a walker:

Police are asking anyone with more information about what happened to contact Trooper M. Watson of Troop 6 by calling (302) 633-5000 or Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-847-3333.

“Your tip could be the match that lights up this case!” the agency said.

Shoplifting and theft have been a significant problem recently in stores across the nation. In one instance, 7-Eleven workers took matters into their own hands when a man was accused of trying to steal cigarettes from their shop in California, Breitbart News reported in August.

Video footage shows the wild encounter:

“It is also important to note that Breitbart News reported in 2015 that California’s Proposition 47 of 2014, ‘which changed some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors,’ coincided with increasing crime across different areas of the state,” the report said.

Meanwhile, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and other major retailers began shuttering stores across the nation due to many instances of theft, per a Breitbart News article from April 2023.

In 2021, the outlet reported that a shoplifting surge forced Walgreens to close down five additional stores in San Francisco as police allegedly did very little about the problem.