PROVING he’s the dumbest crook ever, an armed robber filled out a job application at the store he tried to stick up, then fled – leaving his real name and address behind!
“I couldn’t believe he did it, but he did,” store manager Cheryl Hunter told The ENQUIRER.
Hunter was working at Cupid’s Corner, a shop that sells sexy lingerie in Debary, Fla., on March 7 when 17-year-old Cody Conner walked in, pointed a gun at her head and demanded money.
“I was terrified!” recalled the 23-year-old mother of four. “I said, ‘Don’t do this! Please don’t do this!’ But he just said, ‘If you don’t give me the money, I’ll shoot you in your f****** head.’”
Whem Conner claimed he needed the money to support his grandparents, Cheryl told him that she had only $150 in the cash register.
“I said, ‘It isn’t worth it. You could spend the rest of your life in prison. I have a job opening. You could have a weekly salary instead – a regular income,’” she recalled.
Amazingly, Conner fell for her con, giving Cheryl time to scramble into her office and quietly dial 911. She left the phone off the hook and returned with a W-2 federal tax form that Conner started to fill out.
While waiting for cops, Cheryl talked Conner into unloading his gun and took him outside for a cigarette. But after more than 45 minutes, the police still hadn’t arrived. So she locked the store and walked to a nearby gas station, ostensibly to get a soda. Instead, she dialed 911 again.
When she got back to Cupid’s Corner, Conner had fled. But he was picked up four hours later and identified by the information he put on the “job application.”
“It was the worst experience of my life,” Cheryl told The ENQUIRER. “He had to be on drugs. At one point, he hugged me, and then he started crying. Police got his DNA off tears on the countertop.”
In court, defense attorneys portrayed Conner as a mentally disturbed, drug-addled juvenile who simply made a mistake. But the prosecution pointed out that Conner had an extensive burglary, drug possession and probation violation record in his home state of Ohio.
“To say Cody Conner made a mistake is offensive to Miss Hunter,” Assistant State Attorney Kelly Wark told the court. “He carried a loaded firearm into her business, stood in front of her and threatened her life.”
The judge agreed, trying Conner as an adult and slapping him with a 10-year sentence.
Meanwhile, Cheryl is still struggling to recover from her ordeal.
“Before this happened, I was a very trusting, loving, caring member of society, who would give you the shirt off my back,” she said. “Now I am completely paranoid.”
