2014/12/31
Trib Live December 29, 2014: Police use toilet paper roll to link Uniontown man to pizza shop robbery
A threatening note penned on toilet paper helped unravel a robbery attempt at a Uniontown pizza shop, according to police.
Eric W. Frey, 29, of Uniontown is charged with walking into Michael Maria's Pizza on East Fayette Street shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday and handing an employee a note handwritten in black ink on a scrap of toilet paper, police said.
The note read, “I have a gun. Give me $300,” according to court documents.
Frey told the employee that another man had “a gun on me right now, and if I don't come out of here with the money, I'm going to get shot,” police said.
When the employee hit a panic button, police responded to find Frey still in the shop.
He told officers that a large, bearded man put a gun to his back in a nearby alley and forced him to take the note to the pizza shop, warning that he would shoot him if he left the business without cash, court documents indicate.
When police Lt. Tom Kolencik told Frey that he didn't believe his story, Kolencik asked to visit his apartment “to see if his toilet paper matched that of the one used in the robbery attempt,” documents show.
Frey said, “Let's go. I don't have anything to hide,” according to those documents.
In Frey's bathroom, police found a recently opened package of toilet paper on a table. One of the rolls had “writing engraved in it that matched the exact wording on the piece of toilet paper that Frey handed” to the pizza shop employee, Kolencik said.