AndrewBlakePine Bluff, AR – A man was arrested Tuesday when he tried to pay for a meal with a stolen credit card that belonged to his waitress.
The Pine Bluff Police Department said that a 58-year-old waitress named Flora Lunsford had reported her car broken into, and her purse stolen, on Sunday, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Lunsford had parked her vehicle in front of a gas station and went inside, according to KARK-TV.
When Lunsford returned to her car, she found someone had broken into it and stolen her purse, which contained her credit cards and driver’s license, police said.
While she was in the store, a man shoplifted a bottled drink and another man left the gas pumps without paying for his fuel, according to KARK.
Video surveillance from the gas station showed the man from the gas pump breaking into Lunsford’s vehicle, and stealing her purse while she was inside the station.
Then the video showed the man drove his car around to the side of the gas station where he picked up the man who had stolen the beverage, and the two sped away, KARK reported.
Two days later and two blocks away from the gas station where her purse was stolen, Lunsford encountered the thief who had taken it from her.
She was waiting tables at Shannon’s Restaurant when a customer handed Lunsford her own credit card to pay for his meal.
The waitress said she saw her own name and called the police.
Officers arrested 21-year-old Shamon West at the restaurant, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
When officers searched West, they found Lunsford’s driver’s license, her other credit cards, and her social security card in his pockets, police said.
“As a side note, the driver’s license, as all do, had her picture on it,” the Pine Bluff Police Department said in a press release. “Therefore, you would think he should have known what she looked like. Yet, he still handed her own credit card to her.”
West was charged with forgery and theft by receiving, in addition to charges associated with three outstanding warrants he had at the time of his arrest, according to KARK.
He was being held at the Jefferson County jail in lieu of $2,840 bond.