Sioux Falls Pizza Delivery Driver Attacked and Robbed

It may not seem like a terribly dangerous job, but there is danger involved when you deliver food to people.

A pizza delivery driver is doing okay after he was attacked and robbed after making a delivery in Sioux Falls on Friday night.

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According to Dakota News Now, the 31-year-old driver arrived at an apartment complex and saw four or five people standing outside the building he was delivering to. After making the delivery, that same group confronted him, struck him in the head with an unknown weapon, and took cash from him.

Sioux Falls police are still trying to learn the identities of those involved and the investigation is ongoing.

So just how dangerous is delivering food? According to a very old study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2003, delivering food was ranked fifth most dangerous job in the country. That was four years before smartphones and Doordash.

Perhaps the craziest statistic on delivery driver danger comes from a 2019 BLS study that compared delivery drivers to police officers. It found that if you deliver food you are 1.8 times more likely to be killed on the job than a police officer. Delivery drivers suffered 162 fatalities in 2019 while 86 police officers died in the line of duty. This includes vehicle accident fatalities, but when you consider that delivery drivers don't deliberately interact with criminals knowingly, it shines a fairly bright light on just how precarious it is to drive pizzas around.

On February 26, 2020, 30-year-old Casey Bonhorst was shot while making a pizza delivery in eastern Sioux Falls. He died a day later. Two men were convicted of the crime and sentenced to 60 and 25 years in prison respectively.