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Mechanic tweets asking for marijuana delivery, instead gets retweeted by police and sacked

Police retweeted the request adding 'Awesome! Can we come too?'

Rob Williams
Thursday 15 August 2013 10:25 BST
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A young Canadian mechanic has been fired after his attempt to procure marijuana on Twitter was spotted by police and retweeted.
A young Canadian mechanic has been fired after his attempt to procure marijuana on Twitter was spotted by police and retweeted.

A young Canadian mechanic has been fired after his attempt to procure marijuana on Twitter was spotted by police and retweeted.

Posting under the name Sunith Baheerathan, the Twitter user asked for a dealer to bring drugs to Mr Lube, the oil-change shop where he worked.

“Any dealers in Vaughan wanna make a 20sac chop? Come to Keele/Langstaff Mr. Lube, need a spliff,” he wrote.

Unfortunately for Baheerathan the York Regional Police, who cover the regional municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, between Lake Simcoe and nearby Toronto, were monitoring the micro-blogging site and spotted the tweet.

The police then retweeted the request and adding: "Awesome! Can we come too?"

Just moments after the force retweeted the offending post the exchange was a trending topic in Toronto.

The message was retweeted 4,845 times and favourited 3,213.

Not long after that Baheerathan found himself looking for work after police confirmed they had contacted his employer. "Just got the call of termination," he tweeted to a friend.

A spokesman from Mr Lube confirmed to CBS that Baheerathan had been sacked but would not say whether or not his dismissal related to his online activities.

Shivanand Ramsawak, the manager of the Mr. Lube shop, told the broadcaster "there was an employee here by that name; he no longer works for us.”

The company tweeted their thanks to police saying "the matter has now been handled."

The York Regional Police said they encountered Baheerathan's tweet after spotting an earlier post in which he mentioned @YRP, their twitter username.

Const. Blair McQuillan told The Toronto Star newspaper: "This person made a request for a drug dealer or a drug trafficker to attend their place of business, but no actual offence had taken place at that time," so police "decided a lighthearted approach would be best."

McQuillan said the police response mixed "humour and levity" with education.

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