Are The Hash House Harriers Criminals?

I had not heard of the Hash House Harriers until recently, but after I read about them I thought they sounded like the coolest group.  They call themselves " a drinking club with a running problem", and they make running into a game that sounds like a lot of fun.

One of my favorite bloggers, Steve at Cymru66.com, is a runner, so when I first heard of this running group I wondered if maybe he had ever run with them.  He didn't say that he had, but he does participate in some other really neat obstacle course running events near Virginia Beach.

Anyway, the Hash House Harriers are a group with chapters all over the world.  They're fun, crazy and definitely hardcore.  But now.. they're felons?  That doesn't seem right.

Recently, at a HHH event, the "Hares" marked the trail by sprinkling flour.  During the runs, the Hare goes first and is supposed to mark the trail for the other runners to follow and they commonly throw in some wrong turns, dead ends and forks in the trail just to keep things interesting.

So, some Harriers, an eye doctor from New Haven and his sister who was visiting from Germany, were the designated Hares.  They marked the trail through an IKEA parking lot using flour.

It's a sad sign of the times.  Someone saw the flour and it set off a bio-terrorism scare and the IKEA store was evacuated.

Daniel Salchow, the eye doctor and one of the Hares, after completing the run, heard there was a problem at IKEA.  He biked back to the store and saw all the police there.  When he realized that they were there about the flour in the parking lot, he told them it was just flour and that he and his sister had sprinkled it there… and actually everywhere from New York to California.. to mark the trails.  It's harmless flour, it washes away with the rain!  No harm to anyone.

Salchow and his sister were then arrested and charged with first-degree breach of peace, which is a felony.  Insane.