Originally published June 24 2011
Man robs bank to buy Starbucks coffee
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) It may have seemed like the perfect crime in his head but when it all played out it was obvious the plan was flawed from the start.
Lawrence Petitta, a 52-year-old transient from southern California, allegedly walked into a California Bank and Trust in Mountain View, a city located in the San Francisco Bay area, indicated to a teller he had a gun, and then robbed the place of $1,100 in cash.
This is where the plan got tricky.
Rather than make an elaborate escape with getaway cars, and changing his identity, Petitta strolled around the corner to a Starbucks Coffee shop where he changed clothes, bought a latte then sat down and started to read a newspaper.
An alert police officer, in the area because of the robbery, happened to notice a man who matched Petitta's description sitting in the coffee shop reading. The clothing didn't match, but the suspect's facial features did. So the cop called for back-up and waited.
Not long after, Petitta got up and went to the bathroom to shave his facial hair. When he did, the cops cleared all of the other customers out of the shop and arrested Petitta when he came out.
They didn't find any gun on him, but Petitta had $1,100 in cash and the clothes he was originally wearing, which fit the initial description of the man who robbed the bank.
Without a doubt there have been a lot of botched crimes through the years, to be sure. In one 2008 case, a D.C.-area firefighter was arrested for starting a fire he was later called to extinguish. In another, a woman was arrested after she stole scores of bras but left behind her cell phone, which contained photos of her wearing the bras she stole.
But the case of the latte robber seems to have taken longer to commit than it did to plan. Hopefully justice will be served.
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