Posted on 09/14/2006 12:49:17 PM PDT by SmithL
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - A man who tried to extort $500,000 from a Cracker Barrel restaurant by claiming he found a mouse in a bowl of soup was sentenced Thursday to a year in jail. ADVERTISEMENT
Ricky Lee Patterson, 23, was also fined $2,500.
A jury in April convicted Patterson of conspiracy to commit extortion. His mother, Carla Patterson, was found guilty as well and received the same sentence in July.
The Pattersons claimed they found the rodent in soup that Carla Patterson ordered at a Newport News restaurant in 2004 during a Mother's Day meal.
Prosecutors brought charges after an examination of the mouse found that it died of a fractured skull, had no soup in its lungs and had not been cooked — all of which suggested the rodent was dropped into the customer's soup after it had died.
First Wendy's, now Cracker Barrel. When will these fools learn? You can't burn people like this. There won't be a settlement. The restaurants will gladly bring the trial to verdict to keep their reputations intact.
I'm getting flashbacks of an episode of "Coach" and Bob & Doug MacKenzie in "Strange Brew".
Waiter. What's this fly doing in my soup?
The backstroke, sir.
Pretty clever to check all that out. I guess the managers must have been trained to spot things like the mouse had been obviously killed off site and brought into the restaurant.
dang, he did it on Mothers Day too.
probably took an acetylene torch to undo the massive walker pile-up at the exit
Not exactly - they brought in experts.
That cetainly was nice of Columbia to test that mouse for Cracker Barrel.......
The managers must be trained in mousicide crime scene investigation!
I hates meeses to pieces.
LOL, I guess..... The only problem is the next time, the perps will cook the mouse first. LOL
"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup..." lol
Where there's a buyer, there will be a seller.
Indeed. Some lawyers are pretty smart. So many, however, are dumb as stumps.
Apparently Cracker Barrel wasn't buying what the perps were selling.
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