I don’t know if Jason Donte Hayes will wind up being the stupidest criminal of 2016 as this article suggests, but it’ll definitely be safe to shortlist him.
According to reports, Hayes disguised himself and entered the home of an elderly couple he used to rent a house from. He woke the woman up with a friendly gun tap on the shoulder, then demanded that she give him money. When she told him she didn’t have any, he ordered her at the point of that same gun to drive with him to a bank machine and withdraw $2000. When the machine decided that it had other plans and only allowed her to take out $460, Hayes drove the woman home, then woke up her husband. He ordered them both into the kitchen where he proceeded to talk to them for close to an hour about something or other, police say. Before leaving, he gave them the standard if you tell anybody I’m gonna kill you threat, but then took it a step further by making an appointment to meet again the next day so they could give him the rest of the cash he wanted.
“This is where stupid takes off pretty quickly,” Splain said.
The couple reported the incident to police shortly after noon Jan. 3. After authorities processed the crime scene and interviewed the victims, there was just one matter left.
“He clearly told the victim that he would meet her at a certain location at a certain time,” Splain said. “Not that we would believe that a robber would have ever showed up for a scheduled appointment, but it was something we had to cover.”
So Splain and two officers in plain clothes put together a detail and waited for Hayes at the parking lot Jan. 4. Lo and behold, Hayes actually showed up, wearing the same black-and-white camouflage pants and the same dark scarf around his face that he wore during the kidnapping, Splain said.
“We let him sit there for a couple minutes,” Splain said. “It was clear he was waiting for somebody, and at that point, we took him down.”
The cops found $363 in cash on Hayes and a gold Timex watch that had been taken from the victims’ home, police said.
Hayes, who is 17 but is now an adult in the eyes of the state, was charged with kidnapping, robbery and aggravated assault. He was being held on $200000 bail pending a court appearance.