Jared Cline wasn't thinking straight when he showed his ID to the cashier just before robbing a Circle-K convenience store in Lakeland, FL.
According to a Bay News 9 article, Jared Cline, 22, went to the convenience store in Lakeland, FL on July 5, 2009 and asked for watermelon flavored blunt wrappers when the clerk asked for his identification to confirm his age.
Cline showed his ID, and then asked for money, saying if she complied there wouldn't be "any problems." The clerk then gave Cline an undisclosed amount of cash and Cline left the convenience store. On his way out, he dropped a plastic bag of marijuana.
After reporting the robbery to the police, the clerk could not remember Cline's name, but after detectives looked at the surveillance tapes they were able to search his birthday and match his pictures with records in Lakeland, FL.
"The clerk did a great job...she followed the law and Circle-K's guidelines," said Sheriff Grady Judd. "She knew that it was illegal to sell tobacco products to a juvenile and she asked for his identification - because she did the right thing, the suspect is behind bars. It didn't hurt that our suspect wasn't too bright, either."
Cline was arrested and booked into the Polk County Jail, charged with robbery, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Detectives say Cline confessed to the robbery as well as another petit theft at another Circle-K store.
It's common knowledge that convenience stores are easy targets for robberies. Thus, convenient store clerks are at a greater risk of sustaining injury on the job. Generally, Florida requires injured workers to bring injury claims under the Florida Worker's Compensation statute. This bars the worker from bringing a claim against his/her employer for negligence.
However, because of a foreseeable risk to convenience store workers, Florida has enacted specific security requirements for convenience stores. Failure to abide the law may allow the worker to bypass worker's compensation and bring a negligence action against the employer. The clerk in this story luckily survived the robbery and can now chuckle at the experience. It is reassuring to know that Florida laws were created to protect her.
