Awkward: L.A. Man Detained for Humping Sears Mannequin From Behind

Just trying to do their job.

Sergeant Darin Ryburn says a female loss-prevention officer was watching 55-year-old Mateo Garcia, who's from the Valley, wander around the store via surveillance tape. She soon determined he "appeared suspicious"...

... and that he might be about to steal something.

But theft would have been preferable to what Garcia allegedly did next -- a theft of dignity, one might say.

"The loss-prevention officer observed him grab the mannequin from behind and continually thrust himself toward the mannequin," says Sgt. Ryburn. He tells the Glendale News-Press that the female officer later described the motion to police as "inappropriately having sex with a store mannequin."

The horrified officer immediately notified a male colleague (don't blame her) and together they detained Garcia on "citizens arrest" while waiting for cops to arrive.

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Garcia was kind enough to keep his victim's clothes on, but maybe not so much his own. According to Ryburn, he has been charged with misdemeanor for violation of California Penal Code §314.2 (better known as "exposing oneself in public"):

Every person who willfully and lewdly... procures, counsels, or assists any person so to expose himself or take part in any model artist exhibition, or to make any other exhibition of himself to public view, or the view of any number of persons, such as is offensive to decency, or is adapted to excite to vicious or lewd thoughts or acts... is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Next thing you know, he'll be claiming her jeans were too tight, and thus the mannequin must have been complicit in this doggy-style rape by way of creepy interspecies dry humping.

Also, just wondering, has Sears become the new hotspot for sex weirdos in north county?? So much ew.

[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]