A Florida woman used the comments section of a Pizza Hut order made from her smartphone on Monday afternoon to alert authorities that she and her children were being held hostage. When police responded to her message, arriving at the location, she and her children were quickly released, unharmed, and the kidnapper was arrested.
According to a Highlands County Sheriff's Office press release, Cheryl Treadway, a woman from Avon Park, about 85 miles southeast of Tampa, had been arguing most of the day with her boyfriend, Ethan Nickerson, who carried "a large knife."
A woman in Florida who was being held hostage by her boyfriend was able to save herself from harm when she ordered an online pizza with a secret message saying she was being held hostage. While Cheryl Treadway was being held at knifepoint by her angry boyfriend, she convinced him to give back her phone so she could order a pizza using a Pizza Hut smartphone app. In the order's "Comments" section, she wrote "Please help. Get 911 to me!" The Pizza Hut worker who saw the message in the order then called the police, who went to the hostage's house and arrested her boyfriend. “We've never seen that before,” said Candy Hamilton, the Pizza Hut manager. "I've been here 28 years and I've never, ever seen anything like that come through."
a local television station, reported that this was her regular order, a "hand-tossed classic pizza with pepperoni.
The Pizza Hut employees recognized Treadway’s order and realized that her comments to send help could be genuine.
Officers were dispatched both to the Pizza Hut location and to Treadway’s home, where one cop convinced Nickerson to stand down and let the hostages go.
"We've never seen that before," the restaurant's manager, Candy Hamilton, told WFLA. "I've been here 28 years and never, never seen nothing like that come through."