THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 25, 1995 TAG: 9505250004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines
It was an all-too-familiar story with a twist that raises both cheers and qualms: A Chanello's pizza deliveryman was held up at gunpoint in Norfolk's Park Place neighborhood last week. That's the fourth time for that crime in that neighborhood in six months.
It was also the first time the deliveryman pulled his own gun and shot and killed one of the three would-be robbers.
Pizza deliveries have become a favorite ruse of a handful of young men who have no legitimate job skills and apparently no intention of acquiring any, save for ordering pizza and stealing the dough, baked and minted. During a spate of robberies in Newport News, a police officer posing as a pizza deliveryman was shot and killed in January 1994. Late last year, a 17-year-old in Norfolk was convicted of his third such robbery, only four days after shooting a deliveryman through the heart and munching his pizza while the rescue squad saved his victim's life.
So when Norfolk prosecutors declined to charge the deliveryman in last week's case, heads nodded all over Hampton Roads. When one of these guys who so casually make robbery a career dies instead of kills, there seem some just deserts. But there are qualms as well that the National Rifle Association has more ``proof'' that the best deterrent to civilians' getting shot by criminals is civilians prepared to shoot.
Still, everybody has a right to defend himself from a gunman. And nobody should have to take his life in his hands delivering pizza. If that means depriving Park Place of nighttime pizza delivery - as other dangerous neighborhoods have been deprived - so be it. The decent people of Park Place will suffer because of the hoodlums and despite the best efforts of businesses to both protect their employees and serve their customers, and critics will deride that business decision. But nobody around here ever died from not eating pizza. And too many have died from delivering it.
KEYWORDS: MURDER PIZZA DELIVERY by CNB