DEL TACO Crime of the Week?!?!?!

The chain's biggest crime? Firing Dan...

A reader once asked me why I pick on Taco Bell so much by highlighting the crimes that take place at the various outposts of the Irvine-based megachain. I was polite and explained that the Bell is perhaps the most widely-distributed culinary export we have, and that I would pick on Del Taco more if I could. I made the last line up, but it's actually true: it's hard to find crimes that occur at Del Taco, at least on a weekly basis. But for this week's edition, I didn't have to look farther than la naranja. From the Orange County Register:

An off-duty Garden Grove police officer fired shots at a car that clipped his car's open door after a late-night argument at a Del Taco drive-thru.

The driver of the car, Maurice Velonte Cooper, 21, is scheduled to be arraigned Friday on two counts of attempted murder. He is accused of trying to run over Chris Casas, an off-duty Claremont police officer who was at the Westminster Del Taco with his friend Nick Jensen.

It was Jensen, an off-duty Garden Grove police officer, who fired the shots.

Jensen and Casas were in the drive-thru at the Del Taco on the southwest corner of Goldenwest and 21st streets in Westminster a little after 1 a.m. June 3 when Jensen's Chrysler 300 was rear-ended by a Nissan Altima that Cooper was driving, according to a search warrant obtained by Westminster police.

Jensen didn't know it, but there were two empty bottles of UV Vodka in the Altima, and the young woman with Cooper had already vomited several times.

Let's hope the vomit came from the vodka, and not some Macho combo special...