Not too many excuses fly when a person is caught fondling his or herself – but people being people will always try to talk their way out of trouble… as was the case with the two gentlemen that are the subject of this article.
Tabasco fiasco
When 50-year-old Rafael Escamilla (he looks well for 50) was accused of masturbating in front of a teenage passenger sitting in the neighboring seat on a SkyWest flight he pulled out the old Tabasco defense. The 17-year-old cheerleader was looking for a prom dress in Seventeen Magazine when she spotted something out of the corner of her eye:
I looked over and I could clearly see the man’s penis going side to side under the tray table that was down.
According to Escamilla, there was perfectly reasonable reason for rubbing his member under the tray table, he had apparently spilled Tabasco sauce (or a similar condiment) on his Johnson and it had caused “the worst itch in the world”. Unfortunately for Escamilla, the Tabasco defense failed to sway law enforcement officials (possibly because he “never showed any obvious signs that he had an itch in this particular part of his body” during questioning).
The Subway maneuver
When confronted by police over an incident in a city vehicle, Hudson city manager Steve Hartsell explained that the female witness had not seen what she thought she had seen, and that what was on his lap was simply a foot-long sandwich from Subway.
Hartsell was accused of exposing himself and masturbated in front of a woman in a minivan while they were stopped at a traffic light. Hartsell later fessed up and apologized, explaining that “she saw what she said she saw” but wasn’t charged after the complainant failed to press charges. I’m guessing that Hartsell’s original Foot-long excuse was probably what tripped him up – had he been more modest and gone with the six-inch it would have been much more believable.
