Police have released body camera footage of the arrest of a woman who inexplicably thought that brandishing a loaded gun at workers at a Florida McDonald’s location would work wonders as a persuasive tactic when she believed that she had been cheated out a free cookie.
The incident went down on February 16 just before noon when 24-year-old Amari Bente Hendricks became irate at the restaurant in Altamonte Springs, a city near Orlando, allegedly berating the Mickey D’s employees in a confrontation that rapidly escalated – even after they gave her a free cookie to calm her down – to the point where she pulled out the handgun, racked the slide and waved it at the terrified workers while in a vehicle at the drive-thru window.
According to the arrest report, Hendricks lost it when she was initially denied the tasty delight that she claimed she was entitled to because a worker did not ask her about a rewards program, with the manager on duty manager telling police that after the cookie was given to her that she then inserted a magazine into the weapon and chambered a round.
The manager, Eudany Ester Ruiz told police that she was in fear for her life although she did not recall Hendricks “making any threats directly to her while brandishing the firearm.” Another McDonald’s employee, Erick Jose Hernandez said that Hendricks pointed the gun “towards the drive thru window where he is standing, and said that he was able to see down the barrel of the firearm,” the arrest report states. He said that he did not “believe the firearm was pointed directly at anyone” but in “the area where he was standing.”
Ironically, Hendricks is herself a fast food manager, according to local media reports.
(Video: YouTube/WESH)
After Hendricks departed with her free cookie, she was taken into custody by law enforcement officers with the video of the encounter being released showing her being arrested after officers pulled her over.
“Why do I have to put my hands on the hood, am I being arrested?” Hendricks shouted at the officer who asked to place her hands on the blue Chevy sedan that she was driving before she was placed into handcuffs for not complying.
“Why you being all hostile?” Hendricks asked an officer as she tried to play the victim.
As the cops were walking her to the car, they instructed Hendricks to stop resisting and she replied by threatening legal action, “why, you almost broke my arm? That’s a lawsuit,” she said.
(Video: YouTube/Fox 35 Orlando)
Hendricks was arrested and booked into the Seminole County Jail on multiple charges, including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, improper exhibit of a firearm, battery causing bodily harm, and resisting an officer, according to the arrest report.
The incident is just the latest in a spate of violent outbursts that have erupted at McDonald’s locations across the nation, the vast majority of them not involving a free cookie.
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