Committing a crime at a restaurant regularly frequented by Detroit's power elite and that is virtually surrounded both by city officers walking the beat and by city and county police buildings isn't very bright. But it is quite funny...
Crowd helps prosecutor stop would-be thief Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News
Detroit —Even a top official in the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office was surprised by all the help he got when someone swiped his wallet from a downtown restaurant table. "It was just a dumb, young kid. I was yelling that he stole my wallet and I was running, and people kept joining me," said Donn Fresard, chief of staff for Prosecutor Kym Worthy, on Thursday.
"The whole chase only lasted like 17 seconds, but it became a universal community effort."
Fresard was paying his lunch tab at Fishbones in Greektown on Wednesday when he saw a hand slide his wallet from the restaurant table and a tall figure bolt for the door. Jumping from his chair to give chase wasn't exactly the lawyerly thing to do, but Fresard, 54, was quickly joined by other unlikely pursuers.
Bernard Youngblood, 61, the Wayne County registrar of deeds, jumped up from a table nearby. The saxophone player on the corner of Beaubien and Monroe, David "Bosco" Willis, tucked the horn underarm and also joined the chase.
Employees of Fishbones and a cadre of Detroit police and Wayne County Sheriff's deputies ended the pursuit.
"The guy coming around the corner (was) yelling, 'Get him! He took my wallet.' I'm on it because I'm tired of this," said Willis, a 36-year-old laid-off Detroit Public Schools janitor who also plays for donations in the summer outside Comerica Park. "People have tried to steal the change from my box, the sunglasses off my face. I'm tired of people in our town being put upon."
Youngblood said he and Fresard, husband of Wayne Circuit Judge Patricia Fresard, had worked together in 2005 to create a mortgage and deed fraud taskforce.
"I ran after them because I didn't want Donn to be out there alone, but it turns out Greektown is not the place to commit a crime," Youngblood said.
The entertainment district is almost surrounded by law enforcement facilities, including the headquarters of the Detroit Police Department, the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, the Wayne County Jail and juvenile facilities, and multiple government offices including the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice.
"I kept thinking my hunting license is in there," said Fresard who is preparing for a trip next week to a snow goose hunt in South Dakota.
"I was actually catching up to him because his baggy pants kept falling down."
The 14-year-old suspect made a wrong turn exiting the restaurant, doubling back in front of another exit where Fishbones employees blocked his path.
"A Detroit Police cruiser burned rubber to back down the street when they saw the chase coming at them," Fresard said.
Willis said a man ahead of him tackled the suspect, "like a football player. I'm sitting on top of the kid and turn around and, whoa! There are police with guns drawn."
As the officers handcuffed the youth, Fresard said they asked him:
"What's wrong with you? Don't you know there's probably more police in Greektown than at Somerset (the fashionable shopping center in Troy)?"
The suspect denied taking the wallet.
Fishbones employees found it discarded nearby, contents intact.
The youth later was released to the custody of a parent. Juvenile charges are being considered, said Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor's Office.
On the way to his office, Fresard said he thanked the sax-playing Willis, dropping a $10 bill in his instrument case.
"I just hope this poor kid gets handled in a way that he realizes this is no way to live," Fresard said.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
