“Cop delivers baby in Waffle House parking lot.”
“Suit claims cops Taser Waffle House waiter – as a joke.”
The news of the Waffle House Weird seems to be as continuous and prolific as the chain itself. Why is it always Waffle House? Maybe we just pay more attention to a news story when there’s a Waffle House angle. Or maybe unusual events just gravitate toward the Norcross-based chain of diners.
The AJC wrote a March 2009 story about Waffle House’s complete inability to stay out of the news. Here's an update.
July 2009: Powder Springs Officer Kathy Green aids a young mother in the birth of her baby boy early Friday morning at a Waffle House on Florence Road in Austell. Green was patrolling in Austell when she received a call at 1:40 a.m. for medical assistance outside the Waffle House, where Marisa Escamilla, 23, of Dallas was in labor in the back of a minivan. Green delivered the baby in the back of the van as paramedics rushed to the scene.
March 2009: Christopher Daniel "Little Houdini" Gay, an escape artist already the subject of a country song, ditched a deputy outside a Kennesaw Waffle House. Gay told the AP he broke off his zipper and made a key to unlock his shackles. When they stopped at the Waffle House, and the deputy went to the rest room, Gay bolted. Gay was later turned in by a friend in Orlando.
February 2009: A waiter at a Loganville Waffle House filed a lawsuit against the Gwinnett County Police Department, claiming an officer zapped him with a Taser for no reason. Daniel Wilson, 22, said Cpl. Gary Miles, 33, stunned him Feb. 16 at the restaurant as Sgt. Christopher Parry and Sgt. Joey Parkerson laughed. Miles was arrested on charges of misdemeanor battery and violating his oath as an officer, and Parry and Parkerson resigned in June.
July 2008: WH employees George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian get married at the WH in Dacula. Actually, they exchange vows outside next to the parking lot. But they go inside for wedding cake.
April 2008: A 20-year-old Atlanta man barricades himself inside the men's room at WH on Northside Drive and goes on a rampage. When police get the door open, they find him naked and holding the toilet paper dispenser. He has to be maced, then sedated.
October 2007: Kid Rock's tour bus stops at a WH on Buford Highway, and an exchange of words with a customer ends up in a brawl. Rock pleads no contest to battery, ends up signing autographs at a WH in Duluth, raising $12,000 in donations for charity.
March 2007: Two women get in a fight in a WH in Richmond, Ky. When police arrive, four men at the counter leave during the confusion, not paying their $100 tab. Police chase the men at speeds reaching 100 mph, and the men finally crash and are arrested. No word on how four guys, even drunk, can spend $100 in a WH.
April 2003: The late Lawrence Clark requests his memorial service be held at his favorite WH on U.S. 129 near Gainesville. About 40 people, many of them employees, attend, with Clark's ashes in an urn on the hood of a car in the parking lot.
March 1999: Tonda Dickerson, a WH waitress in Montgomery, gets a lottery ticket as a tip. She wins $10 million. Four co-workers sue, saying they had a verbal agreement to split lottery winnings. Courts decide Dickerson gets to keep all the money.
News researcher Sharon Gaus, staff writer Phil Kloer and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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