In a life-threatening situation, one Florida woman used ingenuity and the Pizza Hut app to call for help.
The problem started when a fight between Ethan Nickerson and his girlfriend, Cheryl Treadway, escalated, and Nickerson began threatening her with a large knife. He took her phone away, but eventually she convinced him to give it back so she could order pizza. Treadway, under close watch, couldn't send out a text or a call for help, so she thought of a different way to reach out: She snuck a message into the comments section of the order. She wrote “911hostage help!” and “Please help. Get 911 to me” between pie specifications.
Luckily, she was a frequent orderer from this particular restaurant location, and staff immediately realized that it wasn't a prank.
“We've never seen that before,” Pizza Hut manager Candy Hamilton told area NBC station WFLA. “I've been here 28 years and never, never seen nothing like that come through."
Upon receiving the order, restaurant workers called the local sheriff's office, which sent police over to investigate. The woman answered the door, and she and her two children were escorted out. Police coaxed the boyfriend calmly from the house after about 20 minutes of talking. Nickerson has been charged with aggravated assault with a weapon without intent to kill as well as battery, false imprisonment, and obstructing justice.
Pizza Hut is, apparently, very accommodating when it comes to special requests on orders — and in this case, its customer service may have literally saved lives.
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