When you hear the phrase “pizza guy”, what image pops into your head? A 19-year-old home from college needing to make a few extra bucks? Probably not the biggest and most intimidating guy in the world? But this story shows why stereotypes are just that and not all-sweeping, because in Harvey, Illinois, one of those delivery guys turned out to be a former NFL linebacker, and you shouldn’t try to rob a former NFL linebacker and current Illinois State Senator.
Here’s how the story goes: Napoleon Harris, a former linebacker for the Raiders and Vikings and now a Illinois State Senator, owns two Beggars Pizza franchises near Harvey, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. He told the normal delivery person to head home for the night on September 6 and leave any late-night deliveries to him. That turned out to be prescient, because he received a delivery call to the 15800 block of Paulina Avenue in Harvey to what turned out to be a vacant house and four people there looking to rob him.
According to Harvey Police rep Sean Howard, one man waited for Harris on the porch, while three more men jumped out of the surrounding hedges to attempt to rob him.
“They were expecting a scrawny 5-foot-9 guy, and got Harris instead,” he said. That must have been quite the surprise.
“They put a chokehold on the senator, but to no avail. They were really trying to choke him to death, and he was just too strong. He out-powered all four of them,” he said, according to CBS2 in Chicago. “As they were all beating on him, one guy just went out of his way and really hit him hard, and Napoleon never moved.” He faced many more dangerous hits as a NFL linebacker than what he saw here, you’d bet.
“He just looked at him like Hulk Hogan, and from that the guys knew that we better get out of here, because we can’t get this guy down”, Howard finished. So the thieves took his wallet and the pizza and fled the scene, and Harris followed while calling police. They found the getaway car at a local lumberyard, but not the assailants. But the story doesn’t end there, and somehow gets even crazier.
The getaway car was registered to a Lester Roy Jones, from Georgia, and there was blood in the car when it was found: Jones’ blood. Jones was killed in an abandoned house in Union City, GA just outside of Atlanta and his body was found a few days after the incident in Harvey. So Howard used the descriptions of Harris’ assailants, plus the information he had from the murder in Atlanta, and two of Harris’ attackers were later arrested.
So by sending away his normal delivery driver, Napoleon Harris inadvertently helped police solved a murder case multiple states away, and also disproved multiple stereotypes about pizza drivers in the process. This is the stuff of Law & Order and NCIS, except it was real life. Kudos, Senator Harris.
[Washington Post; CBS Chicago]
