A pizza deliveryman fended off two assailants in St. Paul's Payne-Phalen neighborhood Wednesday night — both apparently bent on looting his booty of two large pies.
Tou Mo Cha, a driver for Eastside Checkerboard Pizza on Payne Avenue, showed up with a couple of pizzas — toppings unknown — at a home in the 800 block of Rose Avenue about 10:45 p.m., according to a St. Paul police report.
He was met by a 5-foot-5-inch man in the front yard. As Cha tried to give him the pizzas, the man sprayed Cha in the face with tear gas.
A second man, standing about 6 feet tall, ran out from behind the house and charged Cha.
The deliveryman pulled a letter opener from his pocket and stabbed the taller man in the chest, the report said.
Both men ran east on Rose Avenue, without the pizzas.
Cha called police but refused medical attention. The police report said that because his only injury was from a chemical spray, he did not require medical care.
A man who answered the phone Thursday afternoon at Eastside Checkerboard but declined to be identified said Cha was "pretty shook up" and was taking a couple of days off.
The order appeared to be a setup, the man said, meant to lure a driver to a robbery.
But Cha wouldn't have it.
"The pizza was not even dropped or anything," the man said.
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