Sheriff Judd: Pizza delivery order lands 'dumb' criminal in Polk jail

LAKELAND (FOX 13) - A not-so-bright suspect with a late-night appetite is in the Polk County Jail. Deputies say Ronnie Dougherty, who goes by "Ronnie D," robbed a Hungry Howie's delivery driver and then made it incredibly easy for deputies to track him down.

It's an arrest that even makes Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd say, "Come on, man! Are you kidding me?"

Sunday night, Dougherty apparently had a craving for wings with a side order of crime. So, he gave the Hungry Howie's on South Florida Avenue in Lakeland a call. He had the order sent to a random home near his own.

"She said, this is not the address attached to the phone number. He said, oh, that's my friend," Judd explained.

When the delivery driver pulled up, deputies say Dougherty appeared with a shirt over his face and a gun in his hand. They say he stole a whopping $20, but didn't even take the wings.

"I was just blown away by it," said the woman who actually lives at the address where the order was delivered.

She asked that we not use her name. The woman and her family had no idea what had just happened outside their home. Ironically, they'd also ordered pizza a few hours earlier from a different company.

"It was really unbelievable," she said. "I got goosebumps all over me, because like, does that really happen? You only watch this kind of stuff on the news."

Finding the person who did it was pretty simple.

Sheriff Judd said, "This didn't take a detective to solve. It took a clerk at Hungry Howie's to solve it."

You see, when "Ronnie D" called Hungry Howie's, he gave the clerk his real name. His real cell phone number and address are in the system. In fact, three days earlier, he ordered himself a large pizza with mushrooms and steak.

"So our detectives walked over to the house, knocked on the door and Ronnie D opens the door. And we go, ya gotta be kidding us," Judd said. "Life's tough. Life's a lot tougher if you're stupid."

As for Ronnie D, he's in the Polk County Jail and won't be calling in any delivery orders for quite a while.

"Guess what?" Judd said. "They don't serve Hungry Howie's wings or pizzas with mushroom and steak in the County Jail."

Ronnie Dougherty did allegedly confess to the crime. When deputies searched his home, they found the clothing he was wearing that night, the stolen money, a BB gun resembling a semiautomatic handgun and two cell phones, both with the Hungry Howie's number in them.

He's charged with robbery with a firearm.