Last Saturday around sunset, with Houston’s heat index hovering around 115º, a tall, skinny man named Robert “Skivvy” Johnson robbed a McDonalds and was seen stumbling from the fast-food restaurant with several employees chasing him.
While holding the sack and pistol in one hand and holding his trousers up with the other, Skivvy crossed a busy intersection toward a shopping center where he rushed into an O’Reilly Auto Parts Store. Sensing his predicament, he grabbed a hostage and drug her to the street. At this point, he was being chased by employees from O’Reilly’s, McDonalds and a member of Houston’s finest.
Somewhere along the way he lost the hostage when she shoved him into an Albertson’s shopping cart. He had to do something so he hijacked the car of an 18-year-old, Lawrence Blackwell, pointed his pistol and yelled, “DRIVE!”
He drove him to a nearby condominium where the harried bandit abandoned Blackwell’s car and literally kicked down the door of widow Miriam Trashell. Amazingly, the near-sighted Miriam was apparently expecting trouble because she immediately started firing her pistol at the intruder, who naturally returned fire – luckily neither hit anything. Houstonians become a bit testy when the temperature and humidity are high.
Shortly, he had enough of Miriam Trashell and dashed through the remnants of her front door onto the parking lot where he accosted a driver who’d just entered. However, he didn’t get far because, for some reason, he couldn’t get the car through the security gate. He then dumped his second car and again took-off on foot.
He ran straight to a nearby Dairy Queen where he climbed inside the cab of a Ben E. Keith truck, pointed the now-empty pistol at the driver and, between huffs and puffs, demanded the truck. The brave driver yanked the gun out of his hand as the befuddled thief fell out the side door and again escaped into the night.
While being chased on foot by a Houston policeman and employees from McDonalds, the auto parts store, a Ben E. Keith meat truck driver and presumably the still irate Miriam Trashell, he stumbled his way into a nearby residential neighborhood.
The poor guy - I’m beginning to feel sorry for him at this point - jumps a fence where he’s attacked and bitten on the shoulder by a large gray Weimaraner. He then beats a hasty, albeit bloody, retreat back over the fence where he runs headlong into the growing posse.
When last heard, he was being treated for minor injuries at Ben Taub General Hospital and obviously under arrest. While being handcuffed and bending over the hood of a Houston squad car, Skivvy was heard to say, “Who was that crazy woman in the apartment?”
Inspector Clouseau could not have planned a better August evening of entertainment in The Bayou City.
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