Late one evening, in a small town in Illinois, a taxi was called to a local bar to pick up a man who had imbibed a bit too heavily. The gentleman in question staggered out to the cab, gave his home address, and slouched back into the seat as the taxi pulled away from the curb.
When they arrived at the guy’s house, the drunk told the cab driver that he didn’t have any money on him, but that he had some in the house. “I’ll just run in and be right back out with the money, okay?”
That was fine by the cabby; it happened all the time. But not quite this way.
The man got out of the cab, staggered into his house, and reappeared a few moments later.
“I couldn’t find any money,” he slurred, “but I found my gun, so you’re going to have to give me all your money.”
Believe it or not, this guy actually robbed the cab driver at gunpoint, took the money, and then lurched back into his house, leaving the cabby still parked outside.
You don’t have to be psychic to see where this is going. The stunned and shaken cab driver backed his vehicle up about a block, called his dispatcher, and told them he had just been robbed at gunpoint, and then described exactly where the armed robber was at the very moment.
When the police arrived on the scene, the cabby repeated his story to them. Then he watched as the police approached the house, weapons drawn.
Pete Peterson was an officer on the force at the time. He remembers that the front door was wide open when the officers approached.
“Only the storm door was shut,” Pete recalls, “and it wasn’t locked.”
The officers looked in through the storm door to the lighted living room. There on the coffee table was the .38-caliber handgun. And there on the sofa, passed out cold, was the robber.
The drunk was sentenced to five years in prison for armed robbery. He might as well have told the cabby, “Take me straight to jail.”