Eyman Chair Theft 'No Winona Ryder Situation' Lawyer Says

LACEY, WA - Ask Tim Eyman, he'll tell you this whole office-chair theft thing is "insane" - in the sense you'd be insane to believe he would steal. Ask Eyman's attorneys, the whole thing is an accident that happened when Eyman wheeled the $70 chair into the parking lot of a Lacey Office Depot without paying for it.

But ask the Lacey City Attorney's Office, they'll say Eyman committed a misdemeanor.

The saga of Eyman and the office chair took a turn Tuesday when Eyman and his attorneys issued a statement about the incident - and the city of Lacey formally charged Eyman with theft.

Eyman lawyers Dan Gerl and Casey Arbenz said in a statement that their client took the chair last Wednesday on accident. They've been trying to give the chair back to Office Depot all weekend, they said.

"[W]e have reached out to Office Depot in an effort to return the chair and/or pay for it, as its removal without payment was accidental," they said.

In his own somewhat contradictory statement, Eyman claimed he actually did pay for the chair.

"As the video shows, I went back into the store to pay for it. That’s right, rather than hopping in my car for a daring get away after my successful bank heist, I walked back into the store and inserted my debit card into the chip reader," Eyman said in the same statement.

Asked about the discrepancy, Arbenz said that Eyman thought he paid for the chair, but was doing multiple things in the store while he was at the checkout. Arbenz said it's "a little unorthodox" to take something from a store and then try to go back to pay for it. He pointed out that Eyman left with the chair while waiting on some photocopies, so he was always going to come back.

"This is not a Winona Ryder situation," Arbenz told Patch Tuesday, referring to the 2001 incident where the actress stole $5,560 worth of items from a Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Like Eyman, Ryder was caught on camera walking out of a store without paying for items, although security guards quickly chased after her.)

The clerk who helped Eyman that day, however, gave a statement to Lacey police saying that Eyman definitely did not pay for the chair.

Eyman did pay for two printers that day, the clerk said. When the clerk tried to help Eyman carry the printers to the parking lot, according to the police report, Eyman "insisted I leave the printers on the ground [next to Eyman's car] because he needed to rearrange a few things."

The video (see above) shows Eyman stroll into the Office Depot vestibule and sit down in a chair. He spins around a few times, then gets up, grabs the chair by the arm, and walks into the parking lot.

About 48 seconds into the video, you can see Eyman walk out of the store with the chair. He walks back inside without the chair at around the 2-minute mark. He's out of camera view for about 2 minutes before he can be seen standing at the checkout station with the clerk.

"I did not, shortly after giving legislative testimony in Olympia, walk into an Office Depot in Lacey wearing a bright red 'Let The Voters Decide' T-shirt, smile for the cameras, and steal a $70 chair just moments before spending $300 on two printers and after getting some life changing good news. The reason that doesn’t make any sense is because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, it’s completely unbelievable," Eyman said in a statement.

Lacey police forwarded the charge to the Lacey City Attorney on Friday for prosecution, according to Thurston County Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Jessie Knudsen.

Eyman is in Florida on vacation, Arbenz said. Arbenz wasn't sure exactly where the chair was on Tuesday.

Image via YouTube