The Best Lede You'll Never Rede

Checking crime reports yesterday, there's this one about a Hilton Head Island man caught shoving a package of ribs and a bottle of barbecue sauce down his pants at the Piggly Wiggly. When the cashier confronted him, his explanation was that he was hungry, and didn't have any money (or, to put it in the stilted newspeak of the Sheriff's Office police reporting: "a clerk did observe a white male place packaged ribs and a bottle of BBQ sauce down his pants in an attempt to conceal and deprive the store of the value of the items." Oh criminals — when will you stop trying to deprive our society of the value of our important items?)
If you're going to shoplift, you might as well get something that's going to stick to your bones, I suppose.

Here's the lede I wanted to write, but didn't.
There's a barbecue in one Hilton Head Island man's pants, and the police were invited.

Here's the full report, as it ran in today's paper:

A man shoplifting from a Hilton Head Island Piggly Wiggly apparently was throwing a barbecue — in his pants, police said.

On July 23, a cashier at the Coligny Plaza store observed a man put a package of ribs in his pants, then move on to another aisle and add a bottle of barbecue sauce, which he also put down his pants. When the cashier confronted him as he tried to purchase two Cup of Noodle soups at the register, the man pulled out the items.

He said he was hungry and didn’t have any money, according to a report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. He was arrested and is being held on $1,092 bond at the Beaufort County Detention Center.

The total cost of the ribs and sauce was $13.18.