THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 2, 1994 TAG: 9407020617
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JODY SNIDER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SMITHFIELD LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
A Suffolk man escaped from the Smithfield Police Department Friday, launching a two-hour search that ended at a sandwich shop while the wanted man waited for a ham and cheese sub.
As police combed the area near The Sandwich Stop, owner Kathy Knobling joked with 25-year-old Robert M. Nichols about being the man police were hunting.
He was that man.
When Knobling suddenly realized that Nichols' looks matched the description of the escapee she had heard on the street, she slipped into another room to call police.
Police Chief Mark A. Marshall said Nichols, a habitual traffic offender, had been arrested in Smithfield about 2 p.m. Friday for driving with a suspended license.
An additional charge for escaping from police was filed Friday.
Nichols and a partner, David Lee Newell, 31, of Windsor, had been going door-to-door Friday, asking Smithfield residents if they wanted their driveways filled with gravel. Smithfield Police officer Kurt Beach stopped to tell the men it was illegal to solicit without a business license, and then checked Nichols driver's license.
Beach arrested Nichols for driving with a suspended license and turned him over to Smithfield police officer Scott Holt, who took the handcuffed offender to the Smithfield Police Department.
Holt said he arrived at the Police Department with Nichols and handcuffed him to a wall, then left to use the restroom. When Holt returned, the cuffs were hanging on the wall, still locked, and Nichols was gone.
``As I was coming out, I heard this, `Hey, hey, hey,' and then bam goes the back door, and he was gone,'' Holt said.
Two hours later, when police officers arrived at The Sandwich Stop, two blocks from police headquarters, ``One of them said, `That's my boy!' '' Knobling said.
As he was being led away, Nichols asked for his money back for the uneaten sandwich.
``I said, `I don't think so,' '' said Knobling.
``Someone else ate the sandwich.'' by CNB