I swear this has happened before, but since for the life of me I can neither remember when nor find reference to it, for now we must judge Michael Casteel and Michael Casteel alone for his poor choices.
Running into a burning building in a frantic attempt to make a rescue is arguably a poor choice, but if he pulls it off he’s a hero who just saved a life, so I’ll give him a pass.
Pushing past emergency responders to get in? Not such a good idea unless they’re incompetent. They usually aren’t, but hey, you never know, right? We weren’t there. Maybe he’s a hero about to save a life.
So whose life means so much to this brave, selfless man that he is willing to risk life, limb and possible arrest to save it? His name is Bud. Bud Ice.
A South Dakota man was arrested yesterday afternoon after he pushed past police and firefighters so that he could “save” his beer inside an apartment building that was aflame.
Michael Casteel, 56, was collared outside his home, a multifamily residence in Sioux Falls. As emergency workers were treating other building residents for injuries, Casteel, cops say, persisted in trying to reenter the building to retrieve beer from his apartment.
Casteel succeeded in returning to his home, where he grabbed two cans of Bud Ice Premium, cops say.
It would be pretty easy and perhaps not entirely unfair to sit here and pick on Mr. Casteel simply for his choice of beer because Bud Ice is kind of no good and you should only do something this dumb to save worthwhile alcohol, but you know what? People like what they like, or at least can afford what they can afford. Poor choice yes, but today we’re going to go against the saying and emphasize quantity over quality. For while we could sit here and judge his tastes all day long, at the end of the day he did this for two lousy cans. Two! Lousy! Cans! That, my friends, is the real problem here. If you’re going to be this big an idiot, at least run out with no less than a two four.
He was arrested, of course. Police charged him with obstructing a firefighter or law enforcement official and took him to the cooler. There he sits in lieu of $300 bond, which makes my affordability theory seem pretty sound.
As you may have surmised, this is not Casteel’s first alcohol-related run-in with authorities. His record includes at least one open container violation and a drunk driving charge, and at the time of this beer episode he was found to be violating the terms of a sobriety program in which he was enrolled.