Minnesota police are investigating reports that a white man flashed a gun at a group of black teenagers at a McDonalds on Monday night after making a racist comment, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
In video 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 at that point. All at once the group flinches and 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.
Seconds later, a manager confronts the teenagers and tells them leave the McDonald’s. When they try to explain to her that a man had threatened them with a gun, she responds, “I don’t give a fuck, get out of my store now.”
A bystander then intervenes. “Don’t send them off there when a dude just pulled a fucking gun on them,” he says. “You’ve got to call the fucking cops is what you’ve got to do.” The manager still insists the teenagers leave the store—something they told the Star Tribune they did not do, instead choosing to wait for the police to arrive.
In another video, another McDonald’s employee tells the teenagers that they are causing a disruption and that “he pulled out a gun for a reason.”
Seventeen-year-old Jihan Abdullahi told the Star Tribune 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 holding up the line. She said she and the friend struggled with the app and finally gave up, canceling the order. Then, as they were walking away, the man said under his breath that it hadn’t worked because they were paying with electronic benefit transfer, which allows those with government-funded food assistance to make purchases with a card. She said she asked the man, “Just because I’m black, you think my friends and I live under EBT?” The man responded, “Yes.”
Their friends joined Abdullahi in confronting the man, and according to Abdullahi, he then waved his handgun toward them and ran off.
Police in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, where the incident occurred, said they were investigating the incident.
