Man gets taste of hot dog vendor’s mercy

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Joe Hornbaker is either the nicest guy in the world or its biggest pushover.

The laid-back proprietor of Joey’s Red Hots in downtown Naperville says he remembers what it was like to be one of the young and the reckless. “I’ve been that guy,” Hornbaker said with a laugh.

That ability to relate proved lucky, indeed, for a 23-year-old convicted drunken driver who went on a rampage last summer, damaging Hornbaker’s work van in the process.

Frankfort resident Scott B. Muller was arrested about 2:30 a.m. Aug. 1 and charged with criminal damage to a vehicle, after he leaped atop the hood of the van, punched its windshield and broke its exterior rearview mirror.

The charge was dismissed Sept. 29 in Wheaton Field Court on the campus of DuPage County Circuit Court. The case was thrown out after Hornbaker declined to attend Muller’s trial and testify against him.

“I just decided not to pursue it,” Hornbaker said Friday night by telephone from his usual haunt near Chicago Avenue and Washington Street. “Water under the bridge.”

‘He was a really nice guy,” Hornbaker said of Muller. “He came by to apologize” after the incident and paid for the $35 worth of damage Hornbaker calculated he caused.

A police spokesman in August said Muller was “highly intoxicated” when he began his assault on the van. He injured himself in the process and later underwent treatment in the emergency room of Edward Hospital in Naperville.

Police also charged Muller that morning with battery for elbowing a passerby in the back of the head. That victim also failed to attend the court hearing, and records showed the battery charge, too, was dismissed.

Muller on May 4 was fined and placed on a year of court supervision, after pleading guilty to a charge of drunken driving in Naperville. He could have faced new penalties for violating the terms of that supervision had Hornbaker opted to pursue the vehicular damage complaint.