Pizza Hut: Florida mother held hostage freed after sending emergency message on pizza order app

Police have charged woman's boyfriend with assault

The call for help on the pizza slip

Cheryl Treadway was not really in need of a small hand-tossed classic with pepperoni when she sent her order request to Pizza Hut. What she really needed were the police.

Ms Treadway was allegedly being held at knife-point by her boyfriend and could think of no way to save herself.

But holding someone hostage is apparently hungry work and her boyfriend agreed to let her order a pizza. At the bottom of her order she wrote “911 hostage help”.

Ethan Nickerson has been charged with assault

It is unclear whether or not Pizza Hut dispatched the pizza, but staff did alert the police who arrived outside her Florida home. Ms Treadway then managed to run outside with a small child while her boyfriend, Ethan Nickerson, was persuaded by police to come out peacefully. Ms Treadway’s two other children were similarly unharmed.

“We've never seen that before,” Candy Hamilton, manager of the restaurant that took the order, told WFLA. “I’ve been here 28 years and never, never seen nothing like that come through.”

Reports said that Mr Nickerson was charged with assault, false imprisonment and obstructing justice.

Police Lt Curtis Ludden said: “I don't know if I ever would have thought of it. I mean it’s just something that she did so naturally. The boyfriend never knew about it until he saw us coming around the corner.”