A publican and two teenage thieves have washed away their bad blood with a cold beer after the pair returned to the hotel they had robbed earlier in the week.
Caleb Dixon, 19, and his friend Dylan Cook, 18, broke into the Toobeah Hotel Motel near Goondiwindi, Queensland, around 12.50am on Tuesday, after allegedly breaking into another pub an hour earlier.
They kicked in the back door, covered their faces with their shirts, and ransacked the beer and cigarette stock before smashing open the tills. About $6,000 was taken in total.
But instead of calling the police, publican Michael Offerdahl and his right-hand man – known locally as ‘Sheriff Dan’ – chose an unexpected path: forgiveness.
After Mr Offerdahl shared CCTV footage and a call for information on social media, both teenagers returned to the pub separately, choosing to apologise to the man they had stolen from face-to-face.
Remarkably, Mr Offerdahl invited each of them into the taproom and poured them a beer.
He told Daily Mail that he wanted to give them a chance to make amends.
‘Hotels are meant for these kind of conversations out here in the bush. We were all kids once doing stupid things,’ he said.
He said ‘forgiveness’ was the rule of the bush.
‘In Toobeah, we have no police, no security, so you have to get pretty good at managing people.
‘I guess over time I have developed a more forgiving attitude towards things – if you can’t forgive a couple of kids, I think you will have a bitter life.’
Nineteen-year-old Dixon was the first to return on Wednesday and apologised over a cold lager.
‘I had a few too many beers, honestly. It was random and it shouldn’t have been done,’ Mr Dixon said.
‘It shouldn’t have been done, let alone to a pub like this, to a town like this and to a good bloke like Michael.
‘I intend and I will repay everything in full by this week, I’ll have everything back for you and the cash too.’
‘I’ve got a beautiful wife at home, I’ve got a family – it affects them more than yourself, if you do love your family, don’t be doing dumb s**t.’
Earlier, Mr Offerdahl described the break-in as amateurish.
‘They’ve just gone completely rogue. Even going through the footage, they don’t actually look like they’ve done a lot of crime before,’ he said.
‘They dropped stuff on the floor and pick it up and put it back away, then tried to make it look like they sort of hadn’t been there.
‘Other than smashing the tills apart, the bastards even shut the door behind them.’
Police charged the pair over the robberies on Thursday morning after they separately took themselves to police.
‘Around 12.50am two men allegedly broke into a hotel on Herbert Street at Goondiwindi stealing an amount of alcohol. Between 1.30am and 2.00am it is alleged the same men broke into a hotel on the Barwon Highway at Toobeah stealing cash, cigarettes, and an amount of alcohol,’ a QLD Police spokeswoman said.
They were both charged with two counts of enter premise and commit indictable offence.
The 18-year-old man was further charged with one count of evade police.
Both are due to appear in the Goondiwindi Magistrates Court on June 25.