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Letter to the editor

Man takes tight rout to jail

Rescuers free him from a cafe vent during lunch.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published June 9, 2007

Billy Jordan of Riverview is freed by Hillsborough County Fire Rescue from an exhaust vent at the Lucky Buffet where he had been stuck for 10 hours.
	[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Skip O'Rourke] Billy Jordan is escorted by Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies and interviewed by the press and media after he was freed from an exhaust vent at the Lucky Buffet.

RIVERVIEW - Maybe if he were water instead of metal on the Chinese perpetual calendar, Billy Joe Jordan would have made it all the way through the ventilation shaft at the Lucky Buffet.

He would have no such fortune.

Instead, the 45-year-old Riverview man got stuck partway down the aluminum duct after plunging feet first into the rooftop shaft shortly after midnight Friday.

Ten hours later, the staff arrived to prepare for the lunch rush. Workers heard noises near the grill.

Buffet worker Guizhu Liang assumed it was a delivery worker at the back door, she said in Mandarin through an interpreter. She checked but saw nothing. Then she heard noises inside the ventilator shaft.

She called to her son, sushi chef Tian Xiang Zheng. He looked up into the vent and saw the bottom of a dangling white tennis shoe.

"I say, 'What do you do?' And he say, 'I stuck in here,' " said Zheng, 23.

Employees called the manager and 911. Then they handed a glass of water up to Jordan, who by then was very thirsty, they said.

Hillsborough County Fire Rescue workers arrived. So did Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies, some of whom recognized Jordan.

Three days ago someone broke in the back door and stole $300 in quarters out of the register, restaurant manager Zhangjin Xu said. He installed a new lock on the back door but didn't file a police report.

Firefighters pulled a truck behind the strip mall at U.S. 301 and Boyette Road. On the roof, they anchored a rope to the truck's ladder and dropped it down the shaft as a harness to go around Jordan's waist.

Inside the restaurant, a firefighter climbed up inside the shaft, his uniformed legs sticking out of the bottom. Employees, not letting the unfolding scene interrupt lunch service, scuttled back and forth, placing steaming plates of General Tso's chicken, barbecued meat and spring rolls on the buffet.

At the sushi table, Zheng sliced rolls mere feet away from the commotion inside the shaft.

Waiters in crimson vests clustered and giggled as reporters began pouring into the restaurant.

Outside, just before 11 a.m., Jordan's head surfaced above the shaft. He looked dazed as rescue workers placed him in the ladder bucket, his hands in handcuffs.

His blue jersey, ragged jean shorts and skin were covered with grime and grease from the shaft. The residue proved helpful in sliding Jordan up and out of the 16-inch square vent, fire Capt. Michael Guincho said.

Jordan told a throng of reporters he felt like a rat trapped in a tunnel. He climbed up on the roof, he said, to catch a burglar.

"Trying to see what was going on because I seen some silhouettes up there," he said.

Asked what he thought would happen after he jumped into the shaft, he said: "Either be a hero or going to jail."

Make it the latter on a burglary charge, sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway said.

Jordan has been arrested six times between 1981 and 1990 on charges that include larceny, battery, marijuana possession, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, according to state records. It was unclear Friday how most of those cases were resolved.

Authorities weren't sure how Jordan got up to the vent after riding his bicycle to the restaurant. They think he may have climbed there from one of the strip mall's lower store rooftops.

A plunge into a ventilation shaft, Jordan said, is something he probably won't ever try again.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 813 661-2441 or amrhein@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 8, 2007, 23:43:04]