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Sheriff's office: Man tries to rob store using a banana
Forsyth County Sheriff's Office
John Steven Szwalla, 17, was charged with common-law robbery after he tried to rob a store using a banana tucked under his shirt to look like a gun, according to the sheriff's office.
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Published: May 15, 2009
Updated: 05/15/2009 03:25 pm
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.
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