A friend paid the bill. What is the crime?
Too much detail missing.
If a stranger was a witness to the dash and paid the bill, is it a crime?
How was the friend not part of the dining group?
I agree... something sounds fishy here. You can't just "Dash" out with a bunch of small children. They must have been waiting on that bill for a LONG time.
I'm not going to sit around forever waiting on a bill.
Or, they might have ben deliberate about it from the beginning. Hard to say, with the minimal information provided.