UPDATE: Nov. 23, 2018 at 1:27 p.m.
Man Who Pulled Gun on Black Muslim Teens in McDonald’s Arrested
ORIGINAL STORY Published Nov. 21, 2018
What started out as an ordinary trip to a Minnesota McDonald’s ended up with a racist pulling a gun on a group of Somali-American teens and a manager yelling for the the group to get out, despite their lives being at risk.
In videos taken by one of the teenagers and posted to Twitter, a group of Somali-American teenagers can be seen confronting the man, who is leaving the store after yelling a racial slur at one of the kids. The man brandished his pistol threatening the teenagers. The group, immediately, turns to run away from the man and one of the teenager yells, “he has a gun.” The gun cannot be seen in the video.
A white, female manager confronts the frightened kids and tells them leave the McDonald’s. Upon attempting to explain to her that a man had threatened them with a gun, she responds, “I don’t give a f**k, get out of my store now.”
Steve Easterbrook is the president and CEO of McDonald’s. Easterbrook leads a predominantly white corporate executive leadership team with only one Black man. McDonald’s has never participated in the Fair360, formerly DiversityInc Top 50 Companies competition.
It took an older white gentleman who was a customer at the restaurant to explain to the “manager” that putting the the group out would be putting them directly in harm’s way. He then instructed her to call the police which is what should have been done on the first place.
“Don’t send them off there when a dude just pulled a f**king gun on them,” he says. “You’ve got to call the f**king cops is what you’ve got to do.”
In a second video shared by Farida Osman, a teen in the group, another McDonald’s employee is heard telling the group: “If he pulled out a gun it’s for a reason.”
“There should be no reason that a man pulled out a gun on children just trying to order their food,” Osman tweeted.
Seventeen-year-old Jihan Abdullahi, one of the teens, stated that she and a friend had been trying to pay for an order with Apple Pay at the McDonald’s when the man became angry, voicing frustration at them for taking too long.
She and the friend were having problems using the app and canceled the order. As they were walking away, the racist man remarked that it hadn’t worked because they were paying with electronic benefit transfer (EBT), which allows those with government-funded food assistance to make purchases with a card.
Abdullahi asked the man, “Just because I’m black, you think my friends and I live under EBT”
To which the man responded, “Yes.”
Following the video surfacing on Twitter, the owner of the Eden Prairie McDonald’s, Paul Ostergaard, assured the public that he would look into what happened.
“Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our customers and employees. We take this matter seriously and are working with local law enforcement while we investigate the situation,” Ostergaard said in a statement to CBS.
Reader Question *Would you have spoken up to the the manager if you would have been there*
