Law enforcement arrested a white man Wednesday afternoon after a Monday night incident where he allegedly pulled a gun on four Muslim teenagers – three of whom are black – at McDonald’s in southwest Minneapolis.
Despite Lloyd Edward Johnson, 55, allegedly brandishing a weapon before a Twitter video shows him stepping outside, the store manager can be seen shouting for the youngsters to leave before a bystander demands she calls law enforcement.
Farida Osman, 16, Jihan Abdullahi, Amal Mohammed, 17, and Zainab Hassan stopped at the fast food restaurant for something to eat when the gun-wielding suspect allegedly initiated trouble by making derogatory comments aimed at a black girl in the group.
White man allegedly pulled gun on four Muslim teens – three of whom are black
When his behavior became physically threatening they called on male friends
She had been having trouble using a new method of payment at the restaurant so stepped out of line when a staff member asked to serve the next customer.
But when the group – some of whom covered their hair with hijabs – stepped back in line to use another person’s payment, Johnson made a snide remark assuming she was transferring benefits to the retailer that were given to her by the government.
‘Jihan heard the man say, ‘You’re probably using EBT,’ Farida Osman told Muslim Girl. ‘And she immediately turned to him and said, ‘Just because I’m black, doesn’t mean I use EBT.’
Osman – who is of Somali heritage – claims that the Minnesota group confronted him about his view they deemed to be coming from stereotypes after he had been complaining in the lead-up to his racist comment.
Their defense of Abdullahi, who was having Apple Pay issues at the McDonald’s branch, only got him riled up as a result.
‘They weren’t really familiar with it, so it took them a while to work it out, but they still couldn’t figure it out, so they gave up,’ Osman continued about how Johnson got impatient before he started ‘cussing them out’.
The man then pulled out a gun and shouted ‘Yoo hoo hoo’ as seen in a video posted on Twitter
Osman recalled that when the stranger advanced toward them with ‘balled up’ fists Mohammed called her friend Amin over, who was sitting in nearby booth ‘because the man was so close she believed he was going to physically hurt her’.
She said he had previously stepped away from them because he saw she was trying to get her phone to record the incident, but advanced again when he saw she was having issues.
‘Amin and his friends came over and that’s when…the man pulls out the gun,’ Osman added about the group of 10 males.
In the clips posted to social media, Osman shared the moment the weapon was revealed to them as her male friend asked the gun-holder why he was getting ‘physical’.
One Twitter video shows Johnson dressed in dark gear and covering his face partly with a baseball cap, boastfully shouting ‘Yoo hoo hoo!’ at the moment it appears the shocked children witnessed the firearm and started to run in the opposite direction.
A member of the group – who had come for a study break from a nearby library – can then be heard yelling in fright: ‘He has a gun!’
Worryingly the teenagers were then sent in the direction of Johnson carrying the firearm on display as the manager attempted to kick them out.
One employee walks over raising his voice to say, ‘Everybody out!’ while another who appears to be a manager angrily yells: ‘I want everybody out of my store now!’
When the children alert her to the fact the man was holding a firearm she replies, ‘I don’t give a f**k, get out of my store now!’
It’s only when a bystander who was not involved pleads for her to keep them inside that she seemingly heads toward the kitchen area to call law enforcement.
‘Don’t send them out there when the dude just pulled a f**king gun on them,’ the man says. ‘You better call the f**king cops, is what you gotta do.’
A member of staff shouted at the teenagers to get out of the venue after the gunman had left
In a separate clip posted online Johnson alleges he has been or was in danger of being physically assaulted by at least one person belonging to the group of students.
Despite standing meters away, he points and tells them: ‘Don’t touch me’ to which they tell him ‘Nobody touched you’. But he hastily shifts his pointing finger in another direction and shouts: ‘Shut up!’
It was addressed in the caption of the first video Osama shared on the microblogging website.
‘@McDonalds is this what you stand for? We were just trying to order when this man said racist remarks, claimed to be touched (when really he pushed a kid as seen on video) pulled a gun out on kids and you still kick us out knowing we’re in danger?,’ she wrote.
Osama’s Twitter account then addressed a man working at the restaurant saying he was not blaming them for the altercation but still saying: ‘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,’ Osama added.
A customer shouted at the staff member to call the police instead of telling the teens to leave
Eden Prairie Police Department said Tuesday that it was looking into the situation surrounding the 911 call ‘regarding disorderly conduct’.
‘Arriving officers located several juveniles inside the restaurant,’ Huffington Post the statement read. ‘Witnesses reported a verbal altercation between an adult male and a juvenile male, during which the adult male reportedly displayed a gun before leaving the scene.’
Paul Ostergaard, owner of the McDonald’s franchise the incident took place at also said they were part of the probe.
‘Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our customers and employees,’ he told Muslim Girl. ‘We take this matter seriously and are working with local law enforcement while we investigate the situation.’
Osama and Mohammed said while it’s the first time they had been confronted with a gun, hostile behaviour toward Somalian people in the area is not uncommon.
‘I think it’s because we were black and Muslim,’ Farida told Buzzfeed News. ‘They look at our skin color and the hijab and say, ‘What does that matter?’
‘I’m so thankful that one man was there. If the good guy who helped us wasn’t there to help us, we would’ve been kicked out and we could’ve been shot.’