Mystery Pine Street cheese flinger apprehended

It all started with a slice of cheese.

Sam Cornett, a local contractor, was driving down Pine Street when he noticed something being thrown at his truck.

“I thought that was kind of strange, so I flipped around and saw them throwing a bunch of items at vehicles and pedestrians,” he said. “I was in a low-speed chase with the cheese flinger, and they got away.”

A week later as Cornet picked up his daughters from the Sandpoint Waldorf School and parked at the nearby skate park. When he returned, he found three more cheese slices. Cornett’s girlfriend, who works at the YMCA, was also “cheezed.”

After finding the slices, Cornett started looking around the park and quickly found the car he recognized as the cheese throwers’.

“I did what any grumpy old man would do,” he said. “I figured one of them must have done it,” he said. “All I was missing was the crackers, honestly.”

Cornet also learned the teens had allegedly been throwing bread at pedestrians in front of the YMCA, and threw cheese at a boy on a bike. At that point, he said, he decided to make a report out of concerns the prank might cause an accident that got someone hurt.

He filed a report with the Sandpoint Police Department, then turned to Facebook.

“Cheezed me last week while driving on Pine. They hit my girlfriend’s vehicle on Pine and my truck today at the skatepark,” Cornett wrote in a Sept. 17 post to the Sandpoint Local Forum. “Has anyone else been Cheezed?”

Over 200 commenters responded, several writing that they, too, had been “cheezed.”

“I’m grabbing my wine in a to-go cup, some crackers and a folding chair,” one commenter wrote. “Heading into town tomorrow for some Friday happy hour redneck appetizers!”

“Must be Packer fans,” wrote another.

One commenter included a cheesier version of the song lyrics for the song “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” with a slightly different version, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of Cheese).”

By later that day, the three suspects, a group of teenagers, had been apprehended, Cornett wrote in an updated post.

“They didn’t confess to doing it,” he said. “But the box of Kraft cheese in the back made it pretty clear they were loaded.”

Cornett said he later learned the same teens had been pulled over and warned previously the week before for cheese throwing. On his post, Cornett added:

“They located the Dad and he [is] going to handle this personally,” he wrote. “Guess the Pine Street Cheeze Flinger has flung his last slice.”