It's 5:30 on a Wednesday morning, and you're broke. Maybe you're short on rent. Maybe you need some beer. Either way you need to get some cash. It's too early to rob a bank. They're all closed. So are jewelry stores. All-night convenience stores have too little cash at this time of day and too many cameras. So naturally you turn to the one place that can satisfy your twin desire for small amounts of cash and over-sugared, deep-fried pastry rings: the local doughnut shop.
It's a brilliant plan. Really, it is. But before you go declaring yourself as a criminal mastermind, it's worth keeping in mind some of the ways the plan can go horribly, humiliatingly wrong.
Take yesterday's attempted holdup of Golden Glazed Donuts on Garland Road just northeast of Peavy Road. According to Dallas police, a man in his late 20s, thin, white, and about 6-foot-2, walked up to the counter and ordered a pastry. The employee went to the back to warm it up -- police, unfortunately, don't specify whether this was a bear claw, kolache or something else -- then returned to take the customer's money. But the man didn't offer any cash, instead revealing a gun and demanding everything in the register.
This is where the scheme began to unravel. The gun was clearly a fake, a plastic children's toy, and the doughnut shop worker refused to hand over the money. A brief struggle ensued during in which the toy pistol slipped from robber's grip and fell to the floor, splintering into two pieces.
Recognizing that his plan had been foiled, he tried to play the whole thing off as a prank. "This is just a joke!" he blurted out before bolting for the front door. Before he made it, he managed to lose both of his shoes.
The doughnut shop employee didn't give chase but hung back, watching as the robber sprinted in socked feet across Garland and into the neighborhood beyond. The worker then picked up the shoes and broken toy gun and placed them behind the counter until police arrived.
