PB diner tries to use waitress’ stolen credit card

Search of suspect turns up other items from purse swiped from car 2 days earlier

A Pine Bluff man was arrested Tuesday morning on accusations that he tried to pay a waitress for a meal with her own stolen credit card.

The city’s Police Department said the 58-year-old woman’s car was broken into Sunday outside the United Filling Station at 5320 Dollarway Road while she was inside the store. Her purse containing her credit cards and driver’s license was taken, according to a news release.

Security footage from the gas station reportedly showed that the man who stole the purse also left the pumps without paying for his gas.

He then got into a car and drove by the side of the business, where another man who had shoplifted a bottled drink inside ran out and got into the car. The pair then drove off.

Tuesday morning, the woman was working as a waitress at Shannon’s Restaurant, a diner two blocks away from the gas station, police said.

When she went to ring up one customer’s purchase, she reportedly looked at the card and saw her own name.

She called the police, “having no desire to pay for the fellow’s meal,” the release states.

The customer, 21-yearold Shamon West, was immediately arrested. Officers searched him and found the woman’s driver’s license, other credit cards and Social Security card, the release states.

“The driver’s license, as all do, had her picture on it. Therefore, you would think he should have known what she looked like. Yet, he still handed her own credit card to her,” police wrote in the news release.

West is charged with forgery and theft by receiving, police said.

He was being held at the Jefferson County jail in lieu of $2,840 bond as of Tuesday afternoon, records show.

Lt. David De Foor, a spokesman for the Pine Bluff Police Department, said he hadn’t before seen a crime solved this way in his time with the agency and found it comical.