PINE BLUFF, Ark. – In a certainly interesting and unfortunate yet amusing turn of events, a credit card thief was arrested when he attempted to pay for his meal with the waitress’s stolen credit card.
An Arkansas man reportedly broke into the parked vehicle of Flora Lunsford, a waitress from a nearby restaurant, and stole her purse while she was inside a store in Pine Bluff at the intersection of Dollarway and Hutchinson.
A surveillance video of the incident showed Lunsford pulling up to the store while the suspect was currently pumping gas on his own vehicle. He enters her vehicle when she goes inside the store and steals her purse. He gets back in his vehicle without paying for gas. Police say he drives to the side of the store, where another man who shoplifted a drink from the gas station gest in the car and they drive away.
Things take an amusing turn, however, when the suspect, 21-year-old Shamon West, ate at a restaurant two blocks away from the incident where Lunsford was working as a waitress and West handed over a card to pay for his meal. When she went to ring it up, she looked at the card and saw her own name, which prompted her to call the police instead of swiping the card.
Police arrested West and was found to also have Lunsford’s driver’s license, social security card, and other credit cards.
“As a side note, the driver’s license, as all do, had her picture on it,” the police department said. “Therefore, you would think he should have known what she looked like. Yet, he still handed her own credit card to her.”
West was booked into the Jefferson County jail for forgery, theft by receiving, and three outstanding warrants.