Hostage Uses App to Order Pizza, 911 Help

'Get 911 to me,' she wrote in Pizza Hut order
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Suggested by Ghille
Posted May 6, 2015 8:08 AM CDT
Hostage Uses App to Order Pizza, 911 Help
This handout photo provided by Pizza Hut shows a hand-tossed pizza.   (AP Photo/Pizza Hut-HO)

A Florida woman helped save herself and her three children from a hostage situation on Monday with help from a pizza app. Cheryl Treadway told police she'd been arguing with her boyfriend, Ethan Nickerson, at their home in Highlands County when he took her cellphone and grabbed a knife. Allowing her to leave the house only to pick up her kids while he accompanied her, Nickerson refused to return the phone until Treadway asked to order a pizza, WFLA reports. Nickerson handed the phone over, and Treadway ordered a pepperoni pizza using the Pizza Hut app. In the comment section, she wrote, "Please help. Get 911 to me," along with the words "911 hostage help!" per NBC News.

A worker at the restaurant's Avon Park location spotted the note. "We immediately called 911," a manager tells WTSP. "I've been here 28 years and never, never seen nothing like that come through." Treadway ran out of the home with a child in her arms as police arrived, and investigators and a hostage negotiator then spoke with Nickerson through the door. "His first words were, of course, 'I'm not coming out because I know I'm going to jail,'" an officer says. However, he surrendered peacefully after 20 minutes and allowed the two other children to leave the home, police say. Authorities say he was perhaps high on meth at the time. He has been charged with aggravated assault, battery, false imprisonment, and obstructing justice. (More Pizza Hut stories.)

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