When TikToker Nick (@coyotenicodemus) was a sophomore in college, he was investigated by the FBI for two accounts of armed robbery just for going to get ice cream.
He is originally from St. Louis, Missouri, and was going to school at the University of New Mexico at the time.
He went home for the summer, and on his last day in his hometown before school started again, his friend, David, convinced him to come along for some ice cream.
It was already 10 p.m., so Nick called the ice cream shop to see when it closed. The shop did not close until 10:30, so they were still able to get ice cream.
Afterward, he dropped his friend off and headed to his other friend, Jenny’s, place. In the morning, David picked him up, and they headed back to school in New Mexico. As they were driving through Oklahoma, Nick’s mom called him.
She was freaking out and asking what he did the night before. Five police officers were raiding the house and demanding to know where he was.
One of the officers asked to speak to him on the phone. He instructed Nick to pull over so he could answer all his questions.
“So, basically, the story is the ice cream store that we were at got robbed five minutes before they closed by a suspect with long hair and a beard, and I called to see when they closed, and then I left the state the next day,” explained Nick.
Because he had left the state, the FBI had to get involved. From then on, he was constantly being interrogated by the FBI for two months.
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The reason they were cracking down on this case so hard was that the guy who robbed the ice cream store was possibly the same person who robbed a bank. The FBI also had no other leads, so they were really narrowing in on Nick.
One day, his parents were telling a friend what was going on, and the friend happened to be a lawyer. He told them that they weren’t supposed to just cooperate with the FBI because there was a very real chance of going to prison.
He advised them to sue or threaten to sue the police department for harassment so they would stop calling.
Once Nick threatened to sue, the calls stopped completely. He still remembers one of the last conversations he had with a detective, who directly told him that he did not seem like the type of person who would rob a bank or an ice cream store.
He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. To this day, it is still an open case in St. Louis, Missouri.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
