Burglary at Taco Bell thwarted

A Bloomington man was arrested early Thursday morning after confessing to police that he had planned to rob the Taco Bell on South Walnut Street. \nJoshua H. Arthur, 18, a Taco Bell employee, was charged with attempted burglary after Bloomington police found him in the woods behind the fast food restaurant with a black bag and ski mask.\nOfficer Jared Oren responded after an anonymous call to the police department said someone was attempting to break into the Taco Bell. After arriving on the scene, \npolice heard crackling in the woods behind the restaurant and saw a man crunching through the snow. He was making his way up the hill away from the building, Bloomington Police Department Sgt. David Drake said, reading from the police report.\nWhen police tried to stop him, the man, who smelled strongly of gasoline, dropped the black tote bag he was carrying and started to walk away from it, according to the report. He then changed his mind, picked his bag up and began to approach the police, the report said. At that point, a purple ski mask hanging out of the bag got caught on a low tree branch and fell to the ground. A search police conducted through the tote bag revealed a hammer, a saw and a container full of gasoline.\nInitially, Arthur told police he was just taking a shortcut home after work, but eventually he admitted to the attempted burglary of the Taco Bell, the report said. The tools in his bag were part of a plan to break through a window of the building and then open up the safe, police said. The gasoline was to burn into the safe if the hammer and saw didn't work, according to the report. Drake said Arthur had gone home after getting off work at Taco Bell at 2 a.m. and had returned with the materials to break into the building.\nArthur was allegedly trying to break into the business because he was being evicted from his apartment later that day and he needed $400 to make a down payment on another apartment. In Arthur's written statement, he said he needed the money because his father depended on him, and they couldn't live on the street.