DOCUMENT: Revolting, Crime

Slap On Wrist For Scrotum On Pizza "Prank"

Perp, 19, was caught in act by alert customer

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Pizza Scrotum Topping

JULY 8--The Texas pizza store employee arrested for adding an unwanted topping--his scrotum--to a customer’s takeout pie is getting off with a slap on the wrist for the revolting act, records show.

Austin Symonds, 19, was busted last year after a patron watched the Papa Murphy’s worker “rubbing his testicles on the pizza he had ordered,” according to a criminal complaint detailing the incident at the eatery in Georgetown, an Austin suburb.

Symonds subsequently confessed to a store manager, saying that he targeted the customer’s pizza--a large stuffed pie with Canadian bacon, pineapple, and extra cheese--because the patron phoned in his order “right before closing time.” The teenager was fired following his September arrest.

Pictured at right, Symonds was originally charged with tampering with a consumer product. That felony count was dismissed earlier this year and replaced with a misdemeanor charge of violating the Texas Health and Safety Code.

As part of a plea deal, prosecutors have approved Symonds for admission to a pretrial intervention program, which, if successfully completed, would result in the criminal case being dismissed. Probation officials are currently reviewing Symonds’s application for the program.

Symonds’s placement in the diversion program is supported by Brent Bradley, the customer whose pizza the teen defiled.

Bradley told cops that he confronted Symonds in the Papa Murphy’s after spotting the teen “rubbing his testicles on the pizza he had ordered.” Caught in the act, Symonds reportedly apologized, saying, “Man, I am really sorry, that was stupid.”

After Bradley asked Symonds his age, the patron declared, “So you are old enough to know better than to put your balls on someone’s pizza.” Symonds replied, “Yes.”

At the direction of police, a Papa Murphy’s manager placed a recorded call to Symonds the day after the incident. The teen told his coworker that he “did what he did because the customer had called in the order right before closing time.”

When questioned by cops, Symonds reportedly confessed and admitted that he “probably” would have given Bradley his order had the patron not seen his scrotum resting on the pizza. “That’s the terrible part,” Symonds noted.

In the criminal complaint, Detective Chris Brown reported that “substances such as fecal matter can be transferred by sweat to the scrotum and could have transferred to the pizza when Symonds rubbed his scrotum on the pizza.” (2 pages)