Aitabdel Salem walked into a Zara store in Manhattan on Nov. 21, 2014, and reportedly tried to steal a coat. When a police officer confronted him, Salem allegedly attacked the officer, and for that he was thrown in jail and given a $25,000 bail.
But prosecutors couldn’t put enough evidence together to indict Salem, so his bail dropped all the way down to $2, a buck for each of two minor offenses he was still charged with.
The path out of jail was now simple enough, but nobody told him about the change.
So Salem sat on Rikers Island, behind bars for around five months without knowing he was 200 pennies away from freedom, according to The New York Daily News. Read more…
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