He was with his wife and kids at a department store. His kindergarten aged son tossed about 7 different shoes from the displays into the cart and a couple fell into the diaper bag. Mind you that none of them matched as they came off the display rack. They were all right foot shoes. My brother sees the ones in the cart and puts them back. As they leave they're approached by loss prevention. They willingly go back inside. Loss prevention finds two shoes in the diaper bag. 2 right footed non matching shoes. Then loss prevention associate asks "wheres the jewelry, the cops are on their way." My brother and wife are clueless. Apparently after seeing the kid toss shoes in the cart loss prevention sees my brother and his wife shopping for jewelry. Not expensive stuff, but the cheap crap that runs 5-20 bucks that's attached to the little white cards mounted all over the spindle displays. Loss prevention finds a few white cards where jewelry has been removed. Police come, jewelry items were never found even after allowing police to search their persons and all belongings. Loss prevention said they'd let it go if they handed over the jewelry but they honestly didn't have it. Loss prevention insisted they were lying about the jewelry and claimed my brother told his kid to put the stuff in the diaper bag, and said either the husband or wife was getting arrested. My brother asked the cop what the charge was. Cop says misdemeanor. Brother says "take me." And so they did even though the cops themselves thought it silly. But technically they left with two different shoes allowing them to charge the theft of 2 pairs of shoes. About $80. Anything over $50 is a class B misdemeanor. He got an attorney. Attorney says you can fight and win but it could cost into the thousands, or we can request pretrial diversion and get it expunged since my brother hasn't had even a speeding ticket in the last 10 years. He chose option b solely due to cost. About $1000 after expungement. Sorry for the novel, but you asked.
Aside from the judgements of those on this forum the details really don't matter. No matter the details, he was arrested for petty theft. The story is ludicrous and if he tries to paint that picture in an interview it will sound just as it is. Ludicrous.