Man in a chicken suit, high on mushrooms, is Tased. He asks GA cops, ‘Are you real?’
Don’t play chicken with the cops.
But if you must run afoul, cavorting in a chicken suit and allegedly causing a public stir while apparently high on hallucinogenic mushrooms is one way to do it.
According to a Putnam County, Georgia, sheriff’s deputy’s account of an encounter he and other officers had with a reportedly disorderly man Nov. 19, the man, dressed in a chicken outfit, was roaming a neighborhood near Lake Oconee.
The episode unfolded Sunday afternoon after the man’s live-in girlfriend, with whom he had recently broken up, called the police to, as an incident report notes, inform them that the man had “taken mushrooms and had a bad reaction.”
The man, 47-year-old Jason Matthew Pinch, was said to have left his residence on East River Bend Drive on the southwest side of the lake. He then “struck several vehicles with his hands/fists while walking in the roadway,” all while, the write-up went on, “having an adverse reaction to hallucinogenic mushrooms.”
Before sheriff’s Deputy Mark Adams II arrived, a lookout was posted: “Dispatch advised that the male would be wearing a chicken suit.”
Sure enough, when Allen wheeled onto the scene he noticed Pinch sporting what Allen later noted was a “yellow onesie-style pajama outfit, meant to resemble a chicken.”
The deputy further noted that when a passerby in an SUV rolled up and stopped, Pinch began “shouting and beating on the hood” of the SUV. An ambulance showed up and Pinch allegedly banged on it and a patrol car as well.
When Deputy Allen went to arrest Pinch, the deputy told him to get on the ground.
The report stated that Pinch “started to kneel, but then shouted something to the effect of, ‘Are you real?’”
When another deputy went to handcuff Pinch, Pinch allegedly tugged away and tried to elude the officers.
Allen then tried to stun Pinch with a Taser but to little effect. A second stun from the device subdued Pinch, who had allegedly stumbled away to avoid being handcuffed.
Pinch was jailed on charges of disorderly conduct and misdemeanor obstruction of peace officers. He has since been released on bond.
Allen’s report mentioned that after Pinch was taken into custody, he continued “to ask us if we were real, if he was real, and if he was at that time laying in his hammock at home.”
Asked why Pinch might have been wearing chicken garb, Putnam Sheriff Howard Sills on Tuesday told The Telegraph, “That is something I had thought about. I’m hoping that after watching video from the body cams I can answer that.”
