Where’s the beef? It was in his pants! That’s what the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office is saying when they arrested 57-year-old Michael Ardoin after finding hundreds of dollars’ worth of stolen meat products on him. Sheriff Jason Ard says Ardoin stole lean hamburger meat and ribeye steaks from a Walmart Neighborhood Market in Denham Springs.
“All the evidence points to where he wasn’t trying to do this because he was hungry. He was doing this because he has a drug problem, and he was basically trying to trade it for those types of items,” Ard explained.
(courtesy of Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office)
Sheriff Ard says deputies were able to pull Ardoin over before he was able to get onto I-12 after getting some valuable information from the public.
“Not only Walmart associates, but as well as witnesses, cooperated with us. They were able to give us the right information to allow the road deputies to be able to find this individual,” Ard said.
Ard says even though deputies were able to recover the stolen meat, it does the Walmart no good.
“He was putting this stuff in his pants and other areas trying to conceal them, which is not really great when you recover the property because now the stores are not going to be able to reuse it. They’re going to obviously have to destroy it,” Ard said.
Ard says investigators are still putting the pieces together, but it appears that Walmart’s total loss could approach $1,000.
