A barefoot shopper was arrested after allegedly attempting to flee Wal-Mart at Buffalo Ridge Plaza in The Villages in a pair of stolen shoes.
Thomas Stephen Kudela, 41, of Oxford, was arrested at about 8 a.m. Monday at Southern Self-Storage at 4150 E. County Road 466 in connection with the March 16 theft case. Kudela had been detained at the storage facility after Wildwood police were called to investigate a suspicious person.
Kudela had been identified as a suspect in the theft at Wal-Mart which occurred March 16 after a book bag had been left behind at the store. The book bag contained a Bible which held a letter from the public defender’s office addressed to Kudela.
He had been spotted by a Wal-Mart employee when he entered the store and left his boots and the book bag near the shopping carts at the store’s entrance, according to an arrest report from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. Kudela was walking barefoot when he was captured on surveillance as he went to the shoe department and put on a pair of size 13 men’s brown cloth dock-style shoes.
A loss prevention officer confronted Kudela as he left the store in the stolen shoes, valued at $21.98.
“I’m not going back to jail,” Kudela said as he began running away.
Kudela had been arrested on Black Friday in 2017 at the same Wal-Mart store. He had also been arrested last year with methamphetamine at Wawa in Oxford.
He has been booked without bond at the Sumter County Detention Center.
