They say that wisdom comes with age, but something tells me 17-year-old Jason Donte Hayes is never really going to become the wise old owl youngsters come to for advice.

Hayes is being heralded as the dumbest criminal of the year by Philadelphia Police Chief David Splain, who admits that although it’s early days the young man’s stupidity will take some beating.

The story starts with Hayes entering the house of an elderly couple at around 3AM, then waking them up at gunpoint and demanding money. He wanted $2 000 but the couple didn’t have cash handy, eventually accompanying them to an ATM where they maxed out the daily allowance of $460.

And here my friends is where Hayes grabs the title with both hands, Philly describing events as follows:

…[Hayes] told the woman that she had to meet him in a shopping center parking lot on Baltimore Pike at 9 a.m. Jan. 4 with the remaining $1,500 in cash, police said.

He allegedly told the couple that if they reported the incident to authorities, he would kill them, and if they failed to show up at the parking lot with the money the next day, he would kill them as well.

“Her response was, ‘How will I know it’s you?’ ” Splain said the victim asked Hayes. “He said, ‘I’ll be dressed exactly the same way as I am today”…

“He clearly told the victim that he would meet her at a certain location at a certain time,” Splain said. “Not that we would believe that a robber would have ever showed up for a scheduled appointment, but it was something we had to cover.”

So Splain and two officers in plain clothes put together a detail and waited for Hayes at the parking lot Jan. 4. Lo and behold, Hayes actually showed up, wearing the same black-and-white camouflage pants and the same dark scarf around his face that he wore during the kidnapping, Splain said.

“We let him sit there for a couple minutes,” Splain said. “It was clear he was waiting for somebody, and at that point, we took him down.”

The cops found $363 in cash on Hayes and a gold Timex watch that had been taken from the victims’ home, police said.

He has now been charged with kidnapping, robbery, aggravated assault, and related offences. But wait, there’s more – Hayes used to live in a home owned by the female victim, making his chances of getting away with the robbery doomed from the start.

Take a bow young man, you’ve really outdone yourself.

[source:philly]