The 23-year-old woman was working at the coffee shop’s drive-thru on Wednesday, as reported by Local 10 News, when a customer grew angry. The suspect, identified as Omar Wright, 38, sparked a feud over cream cheese that led to verbal and physical threats being directed at the Starbucks barista, before he pulled out a gun.
Wright fled the scene as the police were called, but he was arrested on Thursday. He’s now in custody facing an aggravated assault charge.
According to Local 10 News, the arrest report says: “Mr. Wright’s demands for cream cheese, while armed with a firearm, caused a well-founded fear in the victim leading her to believe that if she didn’t give him the cream cheese, whether he pays for it or not, her life was being put at risk.”
The woman is the daughter of Police Chief Delma Noel-Pratt, who spoke about the incident at a march against gun violence, just hours after the Starbucks altercation.
Noel-Pratt told the crowd: “Community needs to take the streets back. Just today, I could’ve lost my daughter. Today she had a gun stuck in her face.”
She also told Local 10 News: “Forget about the badge, forget about the title, that’s my child. And I thought about, am I going to see her again? Is she okay? Of course, she was upset, she was crying, and so I had to go into mom mode.
“It’s thanks in part to the witnesses, to the real-time crime center that we have. Because of the various cameras that they have in that system, they were able to get a partial tag.”
The police chief added that she’s “just happy that he’s not going to hurt anybody else again.”
McDonald’s Dispute Over a Slushy
Other hospitality workers have faced violence from customers in recent days, most notably the McDonald’s workers in Ravenna, Ohio, who were assaulted by a customer in a dispute about a slushy.
When Cherysse Cleveland was told that McDonald’s staff couldn’t mix three slushy flavors together, she went behind the counter and assaulted staff who tried to remove her from the staff-only area.
A witness filmed the incident and uploaded the video to Facebook where it went viral, with more than 3 million views. Cleveland was arrested on Monday and faces two counts of misdemeanor assault.
Newsweek has contacted the Miami Gardens Police Department for comment.
