The headline was almost “British llama herd takes the law into their own hooves,” but at some point in the production process it occurred that such a title would run into the serious danger of being at best inconsistent with this site’s previous excoriations of UPI reporter Ben Hooper’s soul-crushingly awful puns like the infamous “traffic yam” caused by an overturned truckload of sweet potatoes.

So let’s just play it straight: The Derbyshire Times reported earlier this month that an unnamed suspect fleeing from the scene of a theft of several packets of tobacco – Jesus Christ, lol – choose his route poorly. The man jumped a fence into a farm field and very quickly found himself surrounded by no fewer than eight llamas, ungulates whose territorial nature drives them to behave aggressively toward unexpected intrusions by unfamiliar people or animals, especially at night. The llamas’ loud bleating alerted the owners, Heidi Price and her partner Graham Oliver who, along with their dog, marched the man back to the property line where cops were waiting to arrest him.

The man was not actually attacked by the llamas and has since the February 2nd incident been released on bail, an outcome objectively luckier than the more recent end of another Derbyshire larceny suspect. In a Sunday press release, the constabulary says another unnamed man “died after he entered floodwater near the village of Egginton while evading police. Officers had been pursuing a vehicle towing a caravan that was believed to have been stolen from Oakerthorpe. During the pursuit, in the early hours of Saturday 14 February, the occupants of the vehicle rammed police cars and eventually came to a stop near Egginton, South Derbyshire. Both men fled the vehicle and one was arrested a short time later. The second man entered the flooded Egginton Brook, near the junction of Main Street and Ash Grove Lane. After extensive searches by police and Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service over several hours, the man was recovered from the water. He was treated by ambulance crews at the scene and taken to Royal Derby Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.”

There’s a remote but non-zero chance the llama survivor and the flood non-survivor were the same guy. The British justice system’s gratutious opacity leaves that theoretical door open.