April Yates, 51, found herself in jail last Sunday night because she ate a lot of seafood and had no money to pay for it. Seems like a pretty straightforward case — except for the reason that the rogue diner gave for the attempted dine-and-dash.
Actually, Yates didn’t even try to dash after dining. According to police, she partook of the buffet at Bennett’s Calabash Seafood Restaurant in North Myrtle Beach on Sunday evening for a full four hours — staying so long that other diners in the popular eatery were getting upset.
Reportedly, Yates was causing a “disturbance” somehow at the seafood buffet. And that’s when the restaurant management requested that she take her leave of the place.
Of course, as much as they wanted her out, they didn’t want her out so badly that they restaurateurs were willing to let Yates depart into the night without settling up her bill, which came to all of 26 bucks.
At that point, things really began to get difficult — because not only did Yates eat at the place for four long hours, and bother the other customers at the buffet, but she then refused to pay the money she owed.
The next step, predictably enough, was for the restaurant staff to call the cops. But even when police showed up, the woman wouldn’t pay. In fact, she said that she didn’t even bring any money to the restaurant, so she couldn’t pay even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t.
But Yates was not concerned, even as the officers wondered what she thought she was doing, eating at a place with what seemed like no intention whatsoever to pay for her meal.
But it was no problem, she said, the bill would be taken care of. Jesus, she insisted, would pick up the check for her.
At that point, officers had heard about enough. Jesus was not, apparently, making an appearance that evening, with his wallet open or not, so they charged Yates with defrauding a restaurant.
Of course, Yates is far from the first person to take her faith on religious icons perhaps a bit too literally. Her “Jesus will pick up the check” story is reminiscent of the story of Prionda Hill, who was driving a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix down a street in Indiana in July of last year when she heard God telling her, “I’ll take it from here.”
So she took her hands off the wheel and promptly ran over a motorcyclist.
April Woods was locked up the local Myrtle Beach jail. No word on whether Jesus showed up to pay her bail, after failing to pay for her seafood.
[Images: Myrtle Beach Police Department, TripAdvisor]
