Police: Woman, topless, drives stolen front-end loader through town

Karl Puckett | Great Falls Tribune

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A woman stole a front-end loader and drove it across town before using the excavating vehicle with a bucket to bust through a fence and climb into her apartment, where she picked up a shirt.

She had been driving the big rig topless, police said.

"We can't make stuff like this up," Lt. Doug Otto of the Great Falls Police Department said.

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Police say that Heather Houston, 34, stole the front-end loader Sunday morning from a business at 3120 Rainbow Dam Road, damaging a fence and a pickup in the process.

She then drove it to Fox Hollow Apartments at 1700 St. S.W., where she lives in unit No. 30, police said.

"The word was she was topless," said Otto, referring to the officer's notes of the incident.

At the apartment complex, she lifted the bucket of the front-end loader to an upper-level apartment, using its arm and bucket to climbed inside where she retrieved a shirt.

Polie arrested Houston for felony criminal mischief and criminal endangerment.

The Cascade County Sheriff's Office also is investigating Houston for felony theft and felony criminal mischief portion of the incident that occurred at Rainbow Dam Road, Otto said.

"Got woken up to our TOPLESS upstairs neighbor driving an excavator into the building!" Molly Broxhold wrote on Facebook where she also posted photographs of the damaged fence and the excavator arm positioned near an upper-level window.