A McDonald's restaurant worker in New York is on the verge of life and death after being shot and wounded in an altercation with a young man and his mother over cold fries, police and a local newspaper reported on Wednesday. megalopolis.
In a city where gunshots are daily, this new drama occurred Monday night in Brooklyn, one of New York's five boroughs. The city police (NYPD) confirmed to AFP that a 20-year-old man was in custody and being prosecuted for "attempted murder" and "possession of a firearm".
His companion, aged 18, is also detained and prosecuted for "possession of a firearm".
According to the NYPD and tabloid New York Post story, a 23-year-old waiter at McDonald's was shot and seriously injured in the neck early Monday evening and remains hospitalized in "critical condition."
It all started with a vulgar argument between a 40-year-old woman and the employee about fries that she considered served cold, according to the newspaper citing police sources.
Feeling ridiculed by McDonald's staff about the temperature of her fries, the client, who confided in the New York Post, then calls her son by video.
The latter bursts into the restaurant, clashes with the waiter before the two go to argue outside. The client's son then brandished a firearm and shot the employee, according to the police quoted by the daily.
The New York Post published a photo of the victim just before the tragedy and another while he is lying on the sidewalk, visibly injured.
The victim was unknown to the police and the justice system, unlike his attacker who was arrested several times for various crimes and misdemeanors.
The proliferation of firearms in major cities across the United States is a scourge: there are nearly 400 million in the hands of the civilian population, or 120 guns for every 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey group, and more than 45,000 people were killed in 2020 by these firearms, half of them by suicide according to the association Gun Violence Archive.
In New York, the number of victims (dead and injured) by shootings stood at 988 between January 1 and July 31, 2022 against 1,051 on the same date of 2021, according to weekly statistics from the NYPD.