Punk Teens Arrested For Body-Slamming Display Of Canned Food Donations

Three Alaskan teenagers were arrested after they allegedly "slammed their bodies" into an Anchorage mall's chest-high display of 18,000 cans of food on Sunday. Per the Associated Press, two of the teens attend Anchorage's Dimond High School; the third is home-schooled. Police collared the ruffians after the trio allegedly knocked over the display, which had been constructed by engineering students at Dimond High as part of a canned-food competition. Students arranged the cans before they were to be donated to the Food Bank Of Alaska. The Associated Press doesn't note what happened to the teens after their arrest, or for how long they were in custody.

Not only was this dumb and probably a pain in the butt to clean up, but the body-slamming resulted in damage to many of the cans, which presumably fell a few feet. Because many of the cans are now dented, the food bank is deciding whether they're too damaged to be distributed to needy people. Cans that are severely dented, especially along seams, can have small ruptures that would allow spoiling bacteria to enter the can, in which case they must be thrown away.

This wastefulness makes my blood boil, even as I try to remember that teens do stupid things, and their underdeveloped brains are mostly a tangle of noodles and Mountain Dew, and my own brother and I used to frequently enjoy a game called "bike tag" until it resulted in him breaking his collarbone on a street curb. But it's still hard to find sympathy for these kids, who presumably knew the food was for charity when they slammed into it. Maybe if they're convicted, a judge could make them perform community service at the Food Bank Of Alaska.