Customers watched in disbelief as Florida police arrested a Chuck E. Cheese employee — in costume portraying the pizza-hawking rodent — and accused him of using a stolen credit card, officials said Thursday.
Jermel Jones, 41, was working on Wednesday night when Tallahassee police confronted him at the Chuck E. Cheese on Sharer Road, according to law enforcement records.
“I grabbed his right arm while giving the verbal instruction, ‘Chuck E, come with me Chuck E,’ ” Tallahassee police Officer Jarrett Cruz wrote in the report.
“Jones immediately started tensing up locking both of his arms forward in front of his chest and attempted to pull away from my grip on his right arm. I gave the verbal commands, ‘stop resisting, you are being detained.'”
Cruz told the mascot not to make a scene before the officer and his partner “exerted minor physical effort” to handcuff him, police said.
Victim Michelle Allen told police she’d been to her child’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese on June 28 and soon spotted fraudulent charges at stores she doesn’t frequent, police said.
She went to one of those stores and got security footage, matching the time her card was wrongly used, police said. She recognized the Chuck E. Cheese employee making a purchase at the store at the same time as one of those fraudulent swipes, police said.
Cruz went to that Chuck E. Cheese location and identified Jones, not in costume, as the employee Allen suspected of stealing her card. The officer briefly talked with Allen, who he described as “very nervous” during their conversation.
Cruz left the restaurant to confer with Allen and another officer. When the officers went back inside, Jones was gone but a Chuck E. Cheese mascot was now in the restaurant.
Cruz asked another employee if she knew where Jones went, and if the person in the mouse outfit was in fact him, she “shook her head up and down indicating yes.”
The officers read the mouse his Miranda warnings before he insisted he never stole anyone’s credit.
“I don’t got no card on me, I don’t use nobody’s cards but my own,” Jones said, according to Cruz’s arrest report.
Officers found the victim’s Visa card in Jones’ left pocket and a receipt from a smoke shop where one of the fraudulent purchases was made, police said.
Jones was booked on suspicion of larceny, possession of another person’s ID without consent and fraudulent use of a credit card two or more times.
It wasn’t immediately clear on Friday if Jones had hired or been assigned a criminal defense attorney to speak on his behalf.
“We are aware of an incident involving a part-time employee arrested at our Tallahassee location on Wednesday,” a Chuck E. Cheese spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.
“We have taken the appropriate action concerning the subject employee.”
John Filippelli and Nollaig O’Connor contributed.
