Burglar Caught in the Act ... of Watching Porn

VAN NUYS, Calif.—While most claims alleging that watching porn is harmful to your health or bad for you in some other way have no serious evidence to back them up, one man in Los Angeles found a way that enjoying online porn can indeed by a very bad idea—if you watch porn in the middle of committing a burglary. A suspect named by police as 28-year-old Alan Estrada was caught Monday night allegedly breaking in to Giovanni and Sons, a Van Nuys business that manufactures hair extensions, according to a report by the Los Angeles TV station KTLA. In fact, security camera video showed the suspect entering the business by squeezing his way through an air vent. But what the burglar apparently didn’t realize was that the owners of the hair-extension firm lived upstairs from their place of business. At around 11 p.m., shortly after the man broke in, after he spent some time grabbing some cash—as well as taking the time to plug in his phone to charge it—co-owner Lisa Mirizzi strolled downstairs to make some tea. There she found the man sitting at a company computer—watching porn. “Who would come into a business place and sit there and feel so comfortable to watch porn?” wondered her husband and business partner, Steve Mirizzi—who rushed downstairs when he heard his wife’s screams. Together with their son, Mirizzi chased and cornered the suspect.  The doors to the business were bolted, leaving the man trapped and unable to escape. “I hit him once and he started wobbling, then I grabbed him and slammed him to the ground,” Mirizzi’s son said. A KCBS News report includes the bizarre surveillance video of the porn-watching burglar, and the story also moved into the international press, including coverage on DailyMail.com.  Adding another bizarre twist to the story, according to one report, the intruder actually brought his own porn DVD into the business. The man was described as a transient, raising the possibility that he doesn’t own a computer or a DVD player and was simply looking for a quite place to watch his favorite adult video. The Mirizzis say that they recovered all of the cash the burglar attempted to steal, and now they are able to “laugh about” the strange incident.