Minneapolis (Halbeeg News) – A White man in Minneapolis has been charged with allegedly threatening a group of Somali teenagers with a gun inside a McDonald’s restaurant.
Prosecutors on Monday charged Lloyd Edward Johnson with a felony for pulling a gun on the group.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s charged Johnson, 55, of Eden Prairie with felony terroristic threats and carrying a pistol without a permit, a gross misdemeanor.
in a statement, County Attorney Mike Freeman said Johnson “did everything he could to provoke this incident.” Freeman called Johnson’s alleged actions “outrageous behavior” and said, “it is only through sheer luck that no one was injured.”
The charging complaint says Johnson then said, “you were probably trying to pay with EBT,” a reference to the electronic benefit transfer card used by low-income people to access their federal benefits.
“One of the women turned and answered him back. Johnson then approached the other woman, said some things to her and balled his hand into a fist, making her fear he was going to hit her,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The confrontation escalated as the girl’s friends responded.
“One of the women said Johnson broke away from the group but returned seconds later with his cell phone, appearing to record the argument. He then told everyone to back up and pulled his handgun from his waistband before walking out the door,” according to the complaint.
“Mr. Johnson did everything he could to provoke this incident, by insulting the young lady in front of him, to confronting a second person and finally pulling a gun after he already had moved away from the confrontation,”
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said in a statement. “While he is innocent until proven guilty, this is outrageous behavior and it is only through sheer luck that no one was injured by his actions.”
One of the teens at the restaurant said Monday that he and others feared for their lives.
“We saw the man who was yelling, ‘Don’t touch me, get away from me,’ and he was acting extremely crazy,” one of the teens, 17-year-old Billal Abdi, said Monday at a press conference with Jaylani Hussein executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “He proceeded to pull out the gun, and all of us scattered, so we wouldn’t get shot.”
Hussein told reporters it was clear to him that the teens were “racially and religiously profiled by both the gunman and management” on duty and that restaurant staff would have acted differently if the gunman involved were black and the teens involved were white.
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