Remote Island Shocked by First Theft in 50 Years

The community store on the tiny island of Canna, located in the Inner Scottish Hebrides, goes by the honor system on weekends, leaving its doors open all night so fishermen can tap the WiFi and make purchases; they simply log what they've taken in a ledger and leave money in an "honesty box," per the Guardian. But now the shop's manager says the honesty-box tradition may need to end and the store will be locked at night after it was burglarized over the weekend—what many believe to be the first theft in nearly half a century. Stolen were candy, chocolate bars, coffee, batteries, toiletries, and tea-time biscuits, per the store's Facebook page, as well as six hand-knit wool caps made by manager Julie McCabe. "We are all pretty gutted," she tells the Aberdeen Press and Journal. "I am absolutely floored that someone has been in and did that to our community."

And what the Mirror is calling the island's "crime wave" doesn't stop there: Someone also ripped off the island's beauty shop, apparently on the same night, lifting body butter, bath oils, and shower gels, and money from that store's honesty box. The island, which boasts a population of less than 30, by various counts, prides itself on its nonexistent crime rate and doesn't even have a police station, the Guardian notes. The last reported incident was a 2008 sex-assault case, and before that, the theft of a wooden plate from one of the local churches in the 1960s. "We are thinking about putting CCTV in, but we don't want to do that because it goes against the whole honesty idea," McCabe tells the paper. (More weird crimes stories.)