A resident of the Village of St. Charles was arrested for stealing two bottles of cologne from Target.
Officers responded to Target at Trailwinds Village for a theft involving 32-year-old Dennis Sale Banks at 2 p.m. Friday, according to an arrest report from the Wildwood Police Department. A review of the surveillance footage determined that he had intentionally failed to scan a box containing a 3.5-oz bottle of Goodfellow cologne worth $25.
During an interview, Banks advised that he thought he had scanned it along with a Pepsi bottle. He permitted the officers to retrieve the receipt from his backpack, which confirmed that he had paid only $2.88 for the 20-ounce Pepsi. The officers confronted him with the surveillance footage and information about a prior theft of the same cologne in April, to which he stated he “clearly” did not scan it. He also offered to pay for this theft and the prior incident, the report said.
At that point, Banks’s face reddened, his voice pitched higher, his eyes watered with tears and he swung his arms around in a more exaggerated manner. He also asked what loss prevention said he took. He was subsequently handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol vehicle so the officers could review footage from the prior theft, the report said.
The video showed that on April 4, Banks entered Target wearing the same clothes that he wore during his arrest. He scanned a Devour TV dinner box and bagged it before bypassing the scanner for a $15 Goodfellow cologne sample box, the report said.
Banks was charged with two counts of petit theft and transported to the Sumter County Detention Center. He was released after posting $1,000 bond.