Homeless man dresses in women’s underwear, takes snooze at store

Employees of Kohl’s department store in Joplin were surprised to find a man dressed in women’s undergarments walking about the store Thursday morning when they arrived for work.

“Actually, he was wearing a pink camisole and some pink women’s underwear,” Cpl. Chuck Niess of the Joplin Police Department said of a 52-year-old homeless man arrested on suspicion of burglary and spending some portion of the night inside the store at 301 S. Geneva Ave.

The man did not attempt to leave the business, and Kohl’s employees did not try to apprehend him, Niess said. Instead, they called police at 6:01 a.m., he said. A responding officer discovered the man asleep under a blanket at the back of the store, he said.

The man was still wearing the pink negligee and panties.

There was reason to believe the suspect had tried on a number of the store’s undergarments for women. Nine pair of panties and four bras were found in a pile near where he was sleeping, Niess said.

He said the undergarments — worth a total of $375 — were deemed no longer salable by Kohl’s. The suspect’s own clothes had not been found inside the store by the time he was arrested and taken to Joplin City Jail, he said.