Michael O'Grady, owner of the first car that the man approached, said the man approached the passenger-side window of the car while frantically making the sign of the cross. "We thought he was some sort of religious nut or something," O'Grady told a reporter. Oh, no kidding? You thought the guy dressed in a priest's robe, Jesus cape, and motorcycle helmet who approached you while frantically crossing himself was some sort of religious nut? What tipped you to that, O'Grady?
O'Grady was saved by his mom, who was riding with him and hit the car alarm's panic button. That panicked the man, who jumped into another car, then jumped out and stole a third car, which he then drove away. Police said the whole spree lasted about five minutes.
Some thoughts:
1) If it only took five minutes, I'm not sure that really counts as a "spree," especially since two of the attempted crimes failed. I think it is just one long incident. If we overuse the term "spree," we will cheapen it, and none of us wants that to happen.
2) I would be wary of anyone making the sign of the cross "frantically" who is not obviously about to die. I'm no expert, but I would think you could make it one time and God would get the point. Any more than that would be sort of like when somebody keeps pressing the elevator button over and over again. You know what? It's not getting you up there any faster, people.
3) I seriously doubt Jesus ever wore a cape, and if he did, it wasn't purple. In fact, after searching a number of translations of the Bible, I found no references to "cape" at all, let alone to Jesus wearing one, except for one translation of Isaiah, Chapter 3, in which God gets mad at the people of Zion and takes away all their capes (among other things). Given this evidence that the Lord is not particularly fond of people wearing capes, I stand by my hypothesis that Jesus probably didn't wear one, so it didn't belong on that statue anyway.
The guy who took the cape is still at large.
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