Man Threatens to Blow Up Bar After They Won't Accept a Rock as Payment
Here's a modern fable about Florida: There once was a young man from Maine, who traveled to Tallahassee to "party with the Rainbow People in the national forest." While there, he attempted to pay his $10 tab at a sports bar with a rock. And that was the most sane and reasonable thing he did all night.
After the bartender at 4th Quarter Bar and Grill rejected Jared Simpson's offer to exchange a rock, an actual stone of no special description, for his Bud Light draft, he threw a ripped-up dollar bill at her and left the building, promising to "pay [her] in other ways," WCTV reported.
Simpson came back with a credit card, but it was declined, so he left again.
He then returned a third time, dressed in a grey suit and carrying a briefcase. He set the briefcase down, and carefully opened and closed it. According to a police report, he spoke "some unknown words that he identified as 'tongues'," and warned everyone in the bar that "anybody who goes near this [briefcase] will die." Then he pulled out a phone or beeper, menacingly mashed some buttons, and ran across the street.
Even though he'd earlier been carrying crutches and telling stories about being "shot up in the war," witness said they saw him "doing handstands" outside Jalisco's.
When police arrived, everyone was gathered outside the bar, away from the possible bomb. Simpson approached the crowd and the cops cuffed him.
An officer asked what was in the briefcase, and a smiling Simpson replied, "maybe a bomb or a baby." (It was neither, a bomb squad later determined.)
Simpson shut down any further questioning by singing a song about being a rainbow man and telling cops, "I am my own master. I answer to no one. No police have the right to ask questions."
While sitting in the back of the patrol car, he managed to remove three screws from his handcuffs and get his arms out from behind his back, but he couldn't get entirely free of the cuffs.
He's now in a Leon County jail on charges of bomb threats, hoax weapons of mass destruction, and theft (he never did pay for his beer). He's awaiting a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation—you don't say?—before he can be released on bail.
In other words, it was just another Wednesday night in Tallahassee.
