We will press charges to the fullest extent. You don’t mess with Voodoo’s giant doughnut.
- Tres Shannon
Man, you can take the money, but never, EVER touch the Sacred Doughnut. Such is the lesson that our latest DUMB@$$ apparently failed to take to heart
How desperate does one have to be to steal an oversized foam doughnut? And just how does one keep that sort of thing from being discovered? After all, it is a GIANT doughnut, not something one could easily hide behind the couch, no?
Fryer Jay heard the crash in the Voodoo Doughnut kitchen and turned away from a Monday-night rush of college kids.
Fryer Kevin, who’d slipped on some spilled flour, struggled to his feet, steadying himself on a cart of Maple Blazer Blunts. Then glass shattered in the jammed waiting area, and Jay turned back to the crowd of customers. He remembers wondering if someone had broken one of the candleholders, each inscribed with a portrait of Jesus, that burned under the huge “sacred doughnut” hanging on the wall.
The doughnut, a plastic-foam number nearly 5 feet across, has special meaning for the shop’s late-night brotherhood. “We’re pretty superstitious about that doughnut,” says Fryer Jay.
Over the heads of customers calling out orders for buckets of Dirty Snowballs and Coffee-a-Go-Gos, Jay noticed the foam doughnut moving toward the door. “Hey!” he shouted. “Put the giant doughnut down. Nobody touches the doughnut, man!”….
The thief ignored Jay’s demand that he drop the doughnut. The man was halfway through the door when some customers hooked their arms through the doughnut hole and pulled. The thief tugged from the sidewalk outside. The customers wouldn’t relent. One threw a cup of chocolate milk in the thief’s face. Chunks of doughnut foam broke away and fell to the ground.
Eventually, the thief released the giant doughnut and ran.
At this point, our intrepid DUMB@$$ was chased down by the patrons of the doughnut shop. And wouldn’t you just figure that police wouldn’t be far behind? FIVE police cars arrived on the scene almost immediately. Man, you do NOT mess with a doughnut shop.
Fryer Jay announced that Voodoo Doughnuts would reopen at midnight after the pepper gas cleared out. Shannon gave the customer who first jumped to the giant doughnut’s rescue a coupon for a dozen free doughnuts. And, down at Central Precinct, police cited 25-year-old Nathan Neiderbach on charges of second-degree theft and malicious mischief.
“The police behaved themselves,” Shannon says. “They wouldn’t accept any free doughnuts.”
Perhaps because they were only too happy to have one more DUMB@$$ under lock and key….
