Just Another Night In “As the Waffle Turns.”
Workers thwart attempted robbery
BY IRVIN KITTRELL III Of The Patriot-News
The hooded robber smacked William Eubanks over the head with a handgun late Friday and told him and his two Waffle House co-workers they were being robbed.
What the robber didn’t know was that Eubanks, 29, a cook at the Swatara Twp. restaurant, returned to Harrisburg in June after serving a 3-year state prison term for robbery.He was not going to be victimized, he said Saturday, especially after he realized something about the man’s gun. The robber left the Lindle Road restaurant empty-handed and battered, he said.
“He didn’t get nothing but his butt whipped,” Eubanks said.
Eubanks said he couldn’t take a chance of being robbed because of his robbery conviction.
“I’m just coming home, and I’m on parole,” he said. “If I’m involved in a robbery, [parole agents] might think that it was me, and I’m not going up state for someone’s stupid behavior.”
A man and woman entered the restaurant about 11:30 p.m., police said. Eubanks and his co-workers were the only people inside and were sitting in the dining area, he said.
The man walked in the door, showed a gun and told the employees to get in the back of the restaurant. When Eubanks and his co-workers didn’t move, the man became aggressive, Eubanks said.
“You think I’m playing,” he said, according to Eubanks.
He then hit Eubanks over the head with the gun, Eubanks said. Eubanks noticed something about it.
“What’s wrong with you?” Eubanks asked the robber after he was hit. “Are you crazy? You’re going to rob me with a BB gun?”
LOL… sorry but, just thinking about the dumbness of this made me laugh
“I just want the money,” the robber said.
“Shoot me. You got a BB gun. Shoot me,” Eubanks said.
The robber took out a rusty bolt cutter and threatened the employees, Eubanks said. He led the three to the pantry, where he cut the lock and watched the employees go inside, police said.
But Eubanks had his cell phone.
“I called the police while we were inside,” he said.
The robber heard Eubanks talking on his cell phone and opened the locked door. He threatened Eubanks again.
“I told him ‘you only got a fake gun and you’re not hitting me again,’” Eubanks said.
That’s when Eubanks and another co-worker wrestled the robber to the ground. The man broke free when the woman he was with hit Eubanks’ co-worker over the head with the bolt cutter, he said.
The man and woman left the building with nothing. The incident was captured on the restaurant’s video surveillance tape.
“I’m trying to get a copy of it and put it on YouTube,” Eubanks said, “and call it ‘As the Waffle Turns.’”
No arrests have been made, police said.
