A Pair of Shoes Helps Find Stolen Car: Police Blotter

In the end, it was the shoes that did them in. 

The strange tail involves a stolen car, employee discounts and a pair of shoes in the trunk.  The final result is a felony charge. 

On the night of Oct. 29, a woman reported that her car had been stolen. That woman was an employee at Shoe Carnival, 2530 West 94th Street. The next day on Oct. 30, Robert Gaston, 22, of Chicago, entered that same shoe store to make a return.

With him was a pair of shoes from the woman's stolen car, a receipt with an employee discount marked on it and parked outside the employee's stolen car, police said.

Gaston attempted to return the shoes, but an employee of the store questioned why he would have received an employee discount if he did not work there, police said. 

Sensing something suspicious police were called. Employees of the store also noticed that parked outside was their coworkers stolen car with a woman sitting in the passenger seat, police said. 

Gaston was charged with felony unlawful possession of a stolen vehicle. The woman sitting inside the car, Rhonda Caston, 23, of Chicago, was charged with criminal trespass to a vehicle. 

Police say the car was stolen and the pair found the box of shoes in the trunk with a receipt and tried to test their luck by returning them to the store. 

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Police report information is provided by the Evergreen Park Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. Charges are not evidence of guilt. They are a record of police actions on a given day, and persons charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. If you or a family member are charged or cited and the case is subsequently adjudicated, we encourage you to notify the editor. We will verify and report the outcome.