No matter whether you're getting them from a food truck or from Taco Bell, no matter if you're going for beef, chicken or shrimp, there's no denying that tacos are right at the pinnacle of Mexican food. Don't get me wrong: I love a quesadilla or a burrito, but they don't quite compare to the blend of flavours, the lightness and the portability that tacos offer.
Whether you're going for a big dinner or quick snack, tacos are extremely useful. But what they're slightly less useful for, though, is fighting crime. You can't stop a bank robbery with a shrimp taco, nor does every order to Taco Bell end up with a free application for the Avengers, but one mother of four found an ingenious way to deter a man with a gun, armed with nothing but a delicious beef taco.
For more, let's head out to Los Angeles, California, where a mom, her husband and her four kids were heading back from a nice trip to a water park, and decided to stop off at a food truck for some good old carne asada tacos. Y'know. Standard fare. On this occasion, however, things were far from simple.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says the family were eating in their van when they were approached by a man, who rode in on a bike and flashed a badge, claiming to be a police officer. "He began flashing a gun, that was concealed in his waist band, showed them a badge and told them he was an undercover cop," they revealed via Facebook post.
Fortunately, the mom in question saw through his sheriff's charade, and knew immediately that this wasn't a cop. But with three daughters and a toddler strapped in mere inches from the stranger's waving gun, what exactly was this mom to do? That's when she had a genius idea: she offered the man a taco.
Then, as he continued to flash his gun and rifle through her purse, she told the unsuspecting police impersonator that she was getting extra napkins, and very calmly walked back to the taco stand, where she explained the situation and asked them to call the cops. Within minutes, the cavalry had arrived.
The man panicked, and tried to escape in the family van, but his hastily-thought escape was easily foiled, and the cops quickly arrested him. Not only that, the mom's instincts were right on the money: the suspect turned out to be 38-year-old Juan Rodriguez, who had multiple outstanding warrants and was arrested "on suspicion of child endangerment and impersonating a police officer".
The LA County Sheriff's Department paid tribute to this brave and creative mom: "We want to give a shout out to the brave mother whose momma bear instincts kicked in and she was able to deescalate the situation, plan a distraction and found a way to get deputies to her location immediately."
They say that you should never get between a momma bear and her cubs, and this particular gunman found that out first hand. He was probably expecting to get away with it, too, but there's no way he would have guessed he would have been thwarted by a taco.
