Guards at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional Institution stumbled onto a deeply illegal holiday miracle. Sitting in the prison yard was something akin to an Uber Eats drone delivery. The package consisted of a raw grocery store steak, a pile of crab legs, a tin of Old Bay seasoning, and a whole lot of weed and cigarettes.
According to the South Carolina Department of Corrections, reported by the Associated Press, the entire feast arrived via drone. That proves that just because drones make it easy to get over insurmountable obstacles, it doesn’t mean the payload will be easily accessible to those looking to receive it.
You can get the drone and the stakes and the crab legs and the Old Bay and the weed in the prison, but unless you were trying to leave a Christmas care package for the guards, the intended receiver has no real way of sneaking off with two-foot-long crab legs sticking out of their pockets.
A Drone Just Dropped a Surf-and-Turf Meal Into a Prison Yard. Welcome to the Future.
A photo released by the department shows the bounty in all its glory: the steak still in shrink-wrap, the crab legs probably stinking, and the Old Bay just waiting to season those crabs. That brings up a question that I don’t think the prisoners who were the intended recipients of this care package fully considered: Old Bay seasoning gives off a potent scent when boiled.
Assuming the intended receiver also intended to boil these crab legs with a hefty dose of Old Bay tossed in, that’s a smell that would have so permeated the prison that people in solitary confinement would have clawed their way out to find the delicious source.
No arrests have been made yet, though the department’s spokesperson did manage to squeeze in that the inmates expecting the package were likely “crabby.” Oh, f—k off. South Carolina law makes flying a drone near a prison a misdemeanor worth up to 30 days in jail. Dropping a care package fit for a decadent date night could earn someone up to 10 years in the very prison they dropped the bounty into.
The post A Drone Dropped Crab Legs and Weed Into a South Carolina Prison—But the Guards Got It First appeared first on VICE.
