c. 2008 Religion News Service

CAMILLUS, N.Y. _ Michael P. Delaney Jr. had a $180 problem.

The 16-year-old wasn’t supposed to use the car while his mom was away. But he did.

He retrieved the car from the Holy Family Church parking lot, where his mother had left it while she went on a church trip. He parked the car down the street from the family’s house so no one would see that he was using it.

But he parked illegally. So the car was towed and the unemployed teen suddenly needed $180 to get it back before mom came home.

Delaney was in a bind of teenage proportions.

But the path he took to solve this problem landed him in jail, blindsided a 15-year-old victim and violated a whole Catholic congregation.

Here is the story Delaney told The Post-Standard newspaper of Syracuse and Camillus police about the day he stole the collection basket from an altar boy at gunpoint at Holy Family Church in Fairmount.

Delaney said he thought about asking people for money, but he didn’t want anyone to know what he had done.

Instead, he picked up a $20 airsoft gun (used in competition games similar to paintball) that he had bought at Kmart two years ago. The weapon was clear, but he said he painted it black soon after he bought it so people would think it was real.

He stuffed the gun in the pouch of his hooded sweatshirt and stuffed the hoodie and a ski mask into a backpack.

He went down to the church where he had made his First Communion and had served as an altar boy until about six years ago.

He knew where the church kept its money, in a parish hall across the street. He knew the password to the building was the ZIP code. So he looked up the ZIP code in the phone book. (The password has since been changed.)

The Sunday service was just letting out. Delaney said he saw a boy walking with a basket of money and checks from the day’s collection.

“I saw the person coming and I was thinking I had to do it because I had to get that money for the car,” he said.

Delaney said he punched in the password. He pulled on his hooded sweatshirt with the gun in the pouch. He put on the mask.

He started to think that he couldn’t do it. Then, the boy saw him.

The boy backed up against the wall, facing Delaney. Delaney is 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 215 pounds.

He held the gun in one hand. With the other hand, Delaney said he took the basket out of the boy’s hand.

The boy didn’t say anything.

The 15-year-old victim, whom the newspaper will not name, told police the robber said, “Give me the basket,” according to a police report.

The Rev. Richard Prior wrote about the incident in the Holy Family Church bulletin the next weekend.

“I never used to think twice about opening the door to our parish office no matter what time of the day or night it was,” Prior wrote. “After last weekend’s robbery, when I unlock the outer office door I think of the perpetrator who was inside last Sunday waiting for the collection.”

Prior wrote that he and the staff felt violated by what he called an “act of desperation.”

He said he was confident in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, which says, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

He said God’s grace is “able to overcome the vilest acts of evil” and he called on the parish to pray for the person who stole from them. He also advised them to call their banks and report their checks stolen.

Delaney had run through the woods, shedding ski mask, gun, clothes. He tossed the collection basket up into the trees.

He ran home and emptied the money into a lump on the floor.

There was more cash than he expected. Delaney counted $900 and change. He took out $180 and put a pillow over the rest.

A neighbor gave him a ride to the towing company, which waived $40 of the fee when he said he lived near the place where his car was towed.

He put the car back in the church parking lot.

Then, he put the checks in the backpack and hid them on top of a cabinet in the garage.

He went to Price Chopper and used the stolen money to buy two $50 pre-paid credit cards. Then he went with his family on vacation to Tennessee, and used some of the money to put gas in his mom’s van.

During the trip, he thought about what to do with the rest of the money.

“That’s all I thought about,” he said. “I just kept thinking, OK, I got the money for what I needed it for and now maybe I could just, I was thinking that actually I could just like drop it off and maybe put it back, just drop it off somewhere so no one would know it was me.”

But things started to fall apart.

Delaney said his mom grew suspicious when he suddenly had a $20 bill. Delaney said it was his own money. He said his mom went into his wallet and found about $700 and a wad of $1 bills that he had rolled up with a rubber band. Delaney told his mom that he won the money from gambling.

Police said a crucial turn in the investigation came when a family member provided information that fit what they already knew. Police have not named that person.

Delaney said he thinks it was his mom, Kathleen Susnock. She works for the Onondaga County Probation Department. She did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

On a Saturday evening, the Camillus Police Department showed up at Delaney’s house. He was home alone. Delaney said he told police what happened and where he hid the money and checks. He confessed in a witness statement.

“I am sorry for what I did and I will never think about doing something like this ever again,” he wrote in his statement to police.

Police charged Delaney with second-degree robbery and second-degree criminal use of a firearm, both felonies that carry maximum sentences of 15 years in prison.

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Delaney spent the night in the Onondaga County Justice Center jail. He said he sat alone on a bed in his cell and stayed awake most of the night, aware of the criminals in the open area nearby. He thought they were murderers. He thought the bed looked dirty. He did not talk to anyone.

“It smelled real bad there and it was a lot of people that I didn’t want to be around,” he said.

He said he thought about how much trouble he was in, how he had disappointed his mother and everyone else.

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Delaney said his mother paid the $2,500 bail to release him from jail Sunday.

“It was real sad,” he said. “My mom had to see me in handcuffs.”

When he got home, he said he wrote two letters: one to the church and one to the 15-year-old victim.

“I wrote a couple of paragraphs to Father Prior about how I was sorry, I obviously wasn’t thinking, and just the tough times I’ve gone through with my family,” he said. “I just basically kept telling him how sorry I was.”

Prior could not be reached for comment.

Delaney said he expects to be assigned to probation and a few hundred hours of community service. He said that could involve working as a janitor and doing lawn work at the church and at the police department.

If he is convicted of the two felonies, he could spend more time in jail.

Delaney is eligible for youthful offender treatment and, if approved, that would remove the conviction from his record and seal the file.

In the meantime, the community considers its own verdict.

The church bulletin says, “We are called to pray for the person who stole from us. We are called to ask God to fill his heart with grace.”

A classmate wrote on his Facebook page, “everyone is sayin ur dumb but thats kinda true.”

(Michelle Breidenbach writes for The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y.)

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