A hostage situation situation in Florida was resolved on Monday after a woman used the Pizza Hut app on her smart phone to order a pizza, and call for help in the ‘special instructions’. Cheryl Treadway was able to alert Pizza Hut employees to call 911 using the Pizza Hut app, which lead to police apprehending her kidnapper and her making it out of there unharmed. Pizza is life, pizza saves lives.
Apparently this woman is a Pizza Hut regular, so when the employees saw the instructions and recognized her name they didn’t hesitate to call 911, alerting police of the kidnapping/hostage situation. The Avon Park, Florida resident was being held captive throughout the day by her boyfriend, Ethan Nickerson, who was brandishing a ‘large knife’ as a threat.
Manager Candy Hamilton printed the order.
“It said ‘Please help! Get 911 to me.’ And she placed a pizza order and then down here it said, ‘911 hostage help,” said Hamilton.
The victim, Cheryl Treadway, ordered the pizza online and typed her urgent plea in the comment box.
When Hawk saw it, she knew something was very wrong.
“I was kinda scared. I was scared for the person,” said Hawk.
Hamilton recognized the victim’s name and address as a frequent customer.
“We immediately called 911,” said Hamilton.
Lt. Curtis Ludden, a hostage negotiator from the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office, was first to arrive at the victim’s home. Treadway ran out holding one of her children, but two others stayed inside with their father, Ethan Nickerson. Investigators said he was armed with a knife and wouldn’t answer the door.
“She comes running toward us but two kids are still in the house with a person who’s on narcotics, and you don’t know how their mindset with a knife, and we need to get them out,” said Ludden.
Earlier Tuesday, Nickerson took her cell phone and demanded that he accompany Treadway to pick up her children from school. When the two returned with the children, Treadway was able to convince Nickerson to relinquish her cell phone so she could order from Pizza Hut.
Twenty minutes later, deputies got Nickerson, 26, out without incident. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a weapon without intent to kill, battery, false imprisonment, and obstructing justice by depriving communication to law enforcement.
Who’d have ever thought that the Pizza Hut app could be used for good?! Typically the Pizza Hut app is reserved for late night deliveries, after you’ve drank or smoked too much and have made the decision to punish your body. Once you’ve really set your mind to doing damage to both your digestive system and your physique, that’s when you bust out the Pizza Hut app.
I cannot fathom how Cheryl Treadway thought to use the Pizza Hut app in a crisis situation, but it’s frickin’ amazing that it worked, and she and her children were safely rescued, and justice was served. Maybe we should all use the Pizza Hut app today, as some sort of an homage to justice, and the power of pizza. And I’m not gonna lie here, bros, I’ve typed out ‘pizza’ so many times in this post I’m not sure if that’s how it’s even spelled anymore, and right now pizza’s looking to me like it’s the weirdest word in the English language.
…or something like that.