South Austin Man Robbed At Gunpoint Trying To Meet Facebook Love

SOUTH AUSTIN, TX — Police have made an arrest nearly two years after a man was robbed at gunpoint after arranging to meet a woman he met through Facebook, according to a published report.

Referencing an newly released arrest affidavit, the Austin American-Statesman reported on the case dating to October 2016. That's when a man told police he had been chatting with a woman for weeks on the social media platform before seeing her posts about her having relationship issues with her boyfriend, identified as "Isaacks," according to the report.

In a romantic gesture, the social media pair arranged to meet after he got back from Colorado to buy marijuana, he told police as stated in the newspaper report. After his pot-buying trip, the man said he received a text — presumably from his Facebook love interest — alerting him that she would in a blanket at his driveway awaiting his arrival, the affidavit detailed.

Instead, the love-struck man was knocked to the ground from behind as he approached what he believed was the woman-containing blanket. Making matters worse, the person snuggled in the blanket was another armed man, according to the affidavit referenced by the Statesman.

The victim was forced inside his South Austin home at gunpoint by the two miscreants who demanded to know the whereabouts of his marijuana stash, according to the report. Once in the bedroom, one of the men forced the victim to open a large safe that contained six guns, the affidavit continues.

One of the men addressed the other with the same name as the man with whom the Facebook woman was having relationship issues, the affidavit noted.

Two of the stolen firearms were later traced to a pawn shop, and the people who had them said they got them from the same-named man, Isaacks, the report continued. Police later learned that man was Merrick Isaacks, 20, who was booked into the Travis County Jail in June 2017 on a pair of previous assault charges. On Monday, he was charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon over the girl-in-a-blanket robbery scheme, and he remains behind bars with a bail set at $50,000.

In the end, the protagonist in this real-life drama didn't get the girl. Because there was no girl.

>>> Read the full story at Austin American-Statesman

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Merrick Isaacks booking photo via Travis County Jail records