It began as a late night run for pizza at a pizza shop in North Park. But it ended up being a wild night for Troy Garland and his girlfriend.
They waited more than a half an hour at Berkeley Pizza for a pizza they never got.
"The guy messes up our order. I leave kind of angry because I wanted pizza. She was starving. But I come out cool the whole time,” said Garland.
Once in their car, a stroke of bad luck hit them.
"We turn the corner and that's when we got rear-ended,” said Garland. "(The other driver) was wasted. Beyond wasted. And I told him if you get in your car, you're going to get a DUI. I’ll park your car. He said no, ‘I can drive.’ I told him, ‘you can't drive.’"
Garland says that's when the man hit him, or at least he thought he had been hit.
"It was different and that's when i looked down and saw a knife in his hand," Garland said. "I realized I was stabbed."
The drama didn't end there. While Troy headed to the hospital, the man believed to be drunk drove off in his car, eventually crashing in front of a police officer about 10 blocks away near Lincoln and Swift. He tried to run, but police caught up to him with the help of a helicopter.
Police arrested the driver and took him to jail.
Nearly 12 hours later, Troy got out of the hospital. He and his girlfriend decided to satisfy that midnight craving. This time at a different pizza shop in North Park, Pizzeria Luigi’s. People there were curious to hear how bad his stab wound was.
"Not deep enough to go all the way through, but deep enough to hurt,” said Garland, laughing.
Beneath all the humor, Troy and his girlfriend realize how lucky they are.
"I mean he could've had a gun, he could've stabbed me higher. He could've kept stabbing me. He could've hit somebody. It could've been worse,” said Garland.
Garland says he doesn’t really want anything bad to happen to the driver. He wants the driver to get help and to not drive drunk again.
Police haven’t identified the driver yet or released any details about the charges he now faces.
