Barefoot beer thief

Langhorne Road Exxon clerk Whitney Wagner is used to occasionally seeing people enter her store wearing an open back hospital gown.

The store is just up the street from Lynchburg General Hospital.

However, when a gowned, barefoot man wandered in Tuesday afternoon, chugged two cold cans of Steel Reserve in the bathroom before attempting to walk out with two stolen cans of Icehouse, it caught her attention.

"They'll come in every once in a while. Normally they'll pay for their stuff. Often it's not beer," the 16-year-old clerk said.

The man, Michael Andrew Wright, 36, of Forest, was nice, Wagner said, as he thanked the store clerks and walked out the door.

The manager stopped Wright in the parking lot, where he returned the two beers he'd slipped into his pockets.

Wright, who had tucked his medical gown into a pair of shorts, told storeowners that he didn't have his wallet on him and walked back to the hospital.

Lynchburg Police Officer A.D. Pantana said Wright had checked himself into the hospital that day for substance abuse problems.

"He decided he couldn't take it and walked out," Pantana said.--