Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot

When I worked as a paramedic in a previous lifetime, I once went to a call where a guy had gone from door to door in the university dorm trying to get people to let him in with the argument "Open the door. I have a knife!" He eventually found someone stupid enough to open up.

In Lawrence, Indiana this week, Walter F. Ratcliff tried to rob a Kroger supermarket by telling the checkout clerks "There is a bomb in the meat department, give me all your cash." Their response? "No!" Either he wasn't credible, or they were planning a sale on hamburger.

When police arrived to arrest him, they found two more bomb notes, a fake Indiana handicapped license plate and a toy squirt gun wrapped in black tape to make it look real.