When Mike Dawson, the manager of a Walmart in Titusville, Fla., realized that a couple was trying to steal a few cases of beer from his store recently, he decided that he wasn't going to sit by idly and let a crime take place on his watch. So he followed the couple to their pickup truck that was parked outside, asked them to see their receipt for the beer, and then jumped into the back of the pickup truck when they attempted to drive away with it. And he didn't stop there.
On two different occasions, the couple inside of the pickup truck pulled over and tried to physically remove Dawson from the back of the truck. But he didn't budge. He also didn't freak out when the couple started traveling at high rates of speed on Interstate 95 with him in the back of the truck. But he did alert fellow passengers to his trouble by tossing some of the stolen beers out of the back of the truck.
"I kept throwing beers from the back of the truck," he said, "not at people's cars but towards people's cars, hoping that someone would call the police."
Eventually, a guy named Dave Stewart noticed Dawson in the bed of the pickup truck when the truck pulled over momentarily and helped free him from it by showing a handgun that he had on his hip to the couple inside of the truck. However, the couple ended up driving away before police arrived. Dawson was able to provide police with a description of the couple, though, and also told them what the truck looked like and gave them a few numbers from the truck's license plate. So the police are actively investigating the crime and trying to track the couple down.
Was what Dawson did pretty dumb? Of course. He very easily could have been killed in this incident by any number of factors. But what he did was also was extremely brave. So let's hope that Walmart gives this guy a raise, because clearly he deserves one.
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[via The Root]
