A cold day in 1983: How one local pizza maker captured an escaped convict

By Chuck Thompson | The Shelby Independent

Steven Robinson, owner of Angelos Pizza, stands in the kitchen of his business as he talks about the escaped convict he captured in 1983. photo by Chuck Thompson

PATTERSON SPRINGS – Have you ever found a convict hiding in your car and then held him at gunpoint until the police arrived? If one thing is certain, it doesn’t happen often – at least not to most of us; not around here.

But for Steven Robinson, owner of Angelo’s Pizza in Patterson Springs, it happened twice.

Some of you might remember reading about this incident in one of the local newspapers back in 1983. The Shelby Independent tried to reach out to The Gaston Gazette for permission to print the photo used in the original article, but to no avail. We never heard back after waiting over a month.

Robinson said he grew up in a log cabin, on a quiet dead-end street with his grandma having been one of his neighbors, where you could leave your vehicles unlocked and not worry about anything – at least, that was the feeling up until one night in January, 1983, when it all started with someone trying to steal his dad’s GMC truck.

Robinson said he heard his sister yelling that someone was trying to steal his dad’s truck. His dad grabbed his shotgun but didn’t have a round in it. Robinson grabbed a .22 pistol and they ran after the man as he tried to escape in the truck but backed into a ditch. They caught the truck thief – his dad hit the man with the shotgun and it fell apart, according to Robinson. They tried to hold him until the police arrived, but the man ran away.

Robinson said the only reason the would-be truck thief got away was because he didn’t shoot the man.

“I kept asking, ‘Do you want me to shoot him!’” His dad told him no.

But that wasn’t the end – Robinson and his family didn’t know it, but that was just the warm-up to main encounter later on.

(escaped convict story continued below local advertisers)

By this point, Robinson’s grandmother had left her house to go live with her daughter in Dallas, N.C. The home was unoccupied, but the furniture and belongings were still in the home.

About 2 weeks after the attempted truck theft, a neighbor, Mr. Day, thought someone was breaking into Robinson's grandmother’s house. Robinson and his neighbor walked in the house to look around.

“You could tell things had been thrown round," said Robinson.

They walked through the house, Robinson carried his .30-30, yelling “If someone is in here I’m going to shoot you if you don’t come out!”

Robinson said it was obvious someone had been rummaging through the house, eating canned preserves that belonged to his grandma.

He and Mr. Day walked out of the back door to take a look around the backyard, where an old, wrecked car that belonged to 19 year old Robinson had sat for some time. That’s when he noticed his fishing gear had been pulled out of the wrecked car. He went to open the trunk to put it back in the wrecked vehicle and it suddenly shut on him as he tried to open it.

“It was like a tug pulling on a fishing line,” said Robinson.

He yelled, “I don’t know who you are but you are going to stay there until the police arrive!”

Robinson threw an old tire on top of the trunk of the car and guarded the trunk – “This was before 911 when you had to call the police directly,” Robinson noted.

He kept the rifle pointed at the trunk of the car until the police arrived to arrest the man.

The man who first tried to steal the truck and then was caught hiding in the trunk of his wrecked car was Edward Boone, 20, who had escaped from the local prison in Gaston County.

For two weeks, the man who had tried to steal the truck on a cold winter day had apparently doubled back and broke into his grandma’s house and had been staying there possibly the entire time.

“We don’t how long he was there, but we didn't really want to find him when he ran off after trying to steal my dad’s truck,” said Robinson. “We thought he was gone, we didn't want to make it worse and put our lives at risk. Who knew he had been hiding out in my grandma’s house, but we caught him and he went back to prison.”

Robinson, owner of Angelo’s Pizza, hasn’t caught any escaped convicts hiding in cars since that cold exciting time back in 1983. He spends most of his time running his business and is active with Boy Scouts.

One of his delivery drivers was robbed back in 2005, but other than that nothing too dangerous has crossed his path in the world of criminality.

Robinson said running a business is much harder than holding a convict at gunpoint.  From dealing with sales reps, employees, bills, orders and customers are a lot to juggle compared to one criminal in the trunk of a car.

“I am most proud of the customers that I’ve gotten to know that have become friends,” he said. “They’re just great and I am so thankful for their business and their friendship. I’ve been here so long now, many of the people that originally welcomed me here have passed away, but if a customer is sick I try to visit them in the hospital. I really appreciate their friendship.”  

Robinson noted if a customer’s order isn’t right, he likes people to let him know, so they can correct it. “If someone calls me and says we burned their cheese sticks, I want to know about it.”

He concluded, “I don’t see myself as the owner of Angelo’s, it’s a place for everyone, and I hope everyone feels welcomed here because every customer matters.”

Angelo’s Pizza is located at 2300 S Post Rd.

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Chuck Thompson is a reporter and columnist for The Shelby Independent.