Florida Girl Calls in Fake Pizza Order Just to Steal Delivery Man’s Car, Police Say

The 14-year-old needed a way to go see her boyfriend, according to her father.

byWill Sabel Courtney|
Florida Girl Calls in Fake Pizza Order Just to Steal Delivery Man’s Car, Police Say
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You can't do that with DiGiorno. A 14-year-old Florida girl called in a Papa John's delivery order late at night last month, only to steal the pizza guy's car in order to see her boyfriend, police said. 

According to Lee County Sheriff's Office documents

obtained by The Smoking Gun, 14-year-old Josie Bigelow of Lehigh Acres, Florida called in the order for what Floridians might call pizza but New Yorkers would describe as "a Peyton Manning-endorsed pizza-like substance" to the house of Noel Perez on 3rd Street Southwest shortly after midnight on January 30th, prompting 49-year-old Papa John's employee Christoper Cook to head to the address in order to drop off some midnight munchies. Cook told police that upon arriving at the address, he saw a figure appear from the tree line and leap into his gold 2006 Ford Taurus, rev up the engine, and blast through the front yard and along the canal bank before vanishing out of sight. 

Being a responsible Papa John's employee, Cook immediately called his office, followed quickly by phoning the theft into police. Luckily for Cook, there were apparently few Fords roaming the streets of that part of Florida that night, as a sheriff's deputy spotted the car traveling east near the corner of Lee Boulevard and Lehigh Acres Boulevard and took up pursuit. The Taurus then "fled at a high rate of speed," according to officials; officers reacquired it shortly thereafter when, appropriately enough, the car was spotted in front of Lehigh Acres Middle School, at which point the sheriff's office picked it up via airborne unit.

The flying cops then followed the Taurus to 111 Sebring Circle—the home of one Bill Teal, located approximately six miles from where the alleged theft occurred—and radioed in the location, prompting a sergeant to approach the vehicle and apprehend Bigelow. (Officers said Teal and Bigelow had no prior relationship.) The teenager was taken into custody and brought to a nearby juvenile detention facility, from which she was released after four hours' detention, according to news reports. 

Upon being contacted by a Lee County Sheriff's Office detective, Josie's father Joseph Bigelow told the officer that his daughter's behavior had turned bad recently since she had "fallen in with a bad crowd." He went further in an interview with NBC 2 News, claiming his daughter and her boyfriend had planned the theft. "She needs to go to jail," Papa Bigelow said. "It's the only way you're gonna teach a 14-year-old kid the facts of life."

“She needs an ass whipping," he said. "That and jail.” 

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