Waffle House Robbed, With A Pitchfork

A Waffle House robbery should be national news in and of itself. After all, it’s not exactly the first place people think to rob when they’re needing some extra cash and feeling especially ornery.

But when they do it with a pitchfork, alert the media because that’s news gold.

It’s also what happened to a Georgia Waffle House earlier this week. NBC News contributor M. Alex Johnson reports that the robbery occurred in the suburban Atlanta eatery on Thursday, around 5pm EST, and described the pitchfork bandit as “a portly man wearing overalls and a blue ski mask.”

Further cementing the idea that this was a robbery and not just a misunderstanding between the diner and an overzealous horror movie fan, the pitchfork was described as one of those classic wooden-handle jobs with the three prongs.

(If that doesn’t say menacing, we don’t know what does.)

Norcross Police Chief Warren Summers said the man “herded the employees into the stockroom with the pitchfork and tried to open the cash register.”

When that didn’t work, “he picked up the cash register and left with it.”

Using the police statement, Johnson fills in the rest of the details:

“Once outside, the man tripped and dropped the pitchfork. One of the employees picked it up and chased him first into a drugstore and then back outside to where he’d parked a white getaway van.”

“Thereupon ensued a fight, during which “the suspect was struck with the pitchfork by one of the employees.”

Leatherface was able to make it to his van and speed off but not before “the rear window was broken out by one of the employees.”

Note to self: don’t mess with the Waffle House employees. They’ve been up all night, and aren’t having any of it. The employees are pretty salty, too.

While the pitchfork robber did get away, it wasn’t without some additional trouble following his escape from the employees.

He unwisely made a frantic U-turn in front of an Atlanta police officer, who gave chase. “That kicked off a pursuit, during which the robber drove off the roadway and got away,” Johnson said. “The van was found abandoned on a nearby street, with its back window blown out and glass shards littering the driver’s seat.”

Police have named a suspect in the investigation, with 50-year-old Jeffery Willard Wooten being sought for armed robbery. He was described as 5’9? with a brown buzz cut and mustache, a scraggly beard and hazel eyes.

This unusual tale joins that of the machete wielding man, who robbed Justice Stephen Breyer in 2012. Personally, if we were going to rob Waffle House or any other place with a Friday the 13th prop, that’s the way to go.

[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]