Trata de atracar una tienda... con un plátano

Trata de atracar una tienda... con un plátano
chico de 17 años intentó atracar una tienda utilizando un plátano escondido bajo su camisa, simulando un arma de fuego. Los dueños le retuvieron y, mientras esperaban a la policía, el chaval destruyó la prueba del delito, comiéndosela. Pero a la policía le bastó la piel del plátano, la cual fotografiaron. El chaval ha sido acusado de intento de robo a mano armada.

If he had thought about it, Bobby Ray Mabe probably wouldn't have attacked the man trying to rob his store early Thursday.

But when a man holding something under his shirt asked for a Mountain Dew, then demanded money, a patron and Mabe grabbed him.

"If he had had a gun he would've shot me," Mabe said. "But he had a banana."

Mabe owns 109 Biz Center off Thomasville Road, a computer café that features sweepstakes games. Patrons buy sweepstakes cards, then find out on a computer whether they've won a cash prize.

When a man came in just after 1 and asked for the Mountain Dew, Mabe had just had to pay out $2,000 to a winner. Now someone was trying to take what little he had left.

"It just flew all over me, and I before I knew it, I had my hands on him," he said.

Mabe and the patron held the robber while they waited for the deputies to arrive. Meanwhile, the would-be robber ate the banana.

"And the deputy said, 'Ah hah! He ate the evidence,'" Mabe said. "But we had the banana peel and they took a picture of it."

John Steven Szwalla, 17, was charged with one count of attempted armed robbery. Warrants and records with the sheriff's office list different addresses for him, with a most recent address in Clemmons.

Deputies joked about charging him with destroying evidence, said Major Brad Stanley, a spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff's office.

Szwalla is in the Forsyth County Jail with bond set at $50,000.

* An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the charge was attempted common-law robbery.