Last Updated on: 23rd March 2018, 11:38 am
I don’t know if Thomas Hartman was high on his own supply or what, but I’m having trouble coming up with anything else that would explain any of this.
For some reason, Hartman accused either his cousin or his brother (depending on whether you believe the written article or the irritating autoplaying video on a loop) of robbing him of cash and a cell phone at gunpoint. Police, after questioning the accused and watching some surveillance footage that put him on the other side of town at the time, quickly put an end to that story and told Hartman that it would probably be in his best interest to come clean about why he was really there.
And then things got weird, as if they weren’t already strange enough.
The Douglas County Attorney’s Office released video to ABC affiliate KETV of an October incident in which suspect Thomas Hartman is seen putting a chair on top of a table inside an interrogation room at the Omaha Police Headquarters, climbing atop it, lifting the ceiling tiles and stashing eight individually wrapped packages of crack cocaine inside, according to Omaha Police Department public booking arrest report obtained by ABC News.
Officers caught him in the act. “You’re at the frickin’ police station, man, and you put a chair up and tried to get in the ceiling,” an officer can be heard telling Hartman on the surveillance tape.The officer is seen searching the ceiling and a small white bundle falls out. The officer doesn’t see it initially, but later another officer is seen straightening up the room on the surveillance tape when she discovers the drugs.
“Mother…” she can be heard uttering on the video as she leans down to grab the bag of crack cocaine, which had fallen under the table when police searched the ceiling.
Police also found somebody’s wallet up there, a detail that deserves far more explanation than the brief mention it’s given. Whose was it? Did Hartman stash it at the same time as the drugs? Was it already there? If the answer to question two is yes, how? Why?
But back to Hartman. Police had his girlfriend in another room, where she was explaining to them that the robbery story wasn’t true and that she had been selling sex because Hartman had told her to. Hartman himself eventually admitted that he made it up, but we still don’t know why.
He was ultimately convicted of possession of a controlled substance but not false reporting, which he was also charged with when he was arrested. Add that to the list of things that make no damn sense here, a list that includes literally every other thing that just happened.