A Waterloo woman faces a theft charge after police say she rode away from a local grocery store on one of its motorized carts. Forty-nine-year-old Julie Briggs had been shopping at the Hy-Vee grocery store near Crossroads Mall in Waterloo. She didn’t have a way to get to her home about four miles away, so she says that store employees told her that she could take one of their motorized carts.
Briggs was about halfway home when Waterloo Police pulled her, and the cart, over. Briggs had been driving it in the main portion of the road, forcing passing cars to swerve around her. The cart she was operating has a top speed of less than five miles-an-hour. After speaking with Briggs, police contacted the store, which said they had not given her permission to take the cart home. That’s when Briggs was arrested and charged with second degree theft.
She has since been released from jail. The cart in question is valued at about $2,500.
(Reporting by Jesse Gavin, KCNZ, Cedar Falls)