Prosecutors said Monday they are still looking into the case of a man who has been jailed for the past five days on allegations that he threatened teenagers with a gun inside a McDonald's in Eden Prairie.
"We have deferred a decision on [charges in] the case because there is additional evidence we need to look at, and it was impossible to do it before the [legally established] deadline," said Chuck Laszewski, Hennepin County Attorney's Office spokesman.
The decision allowed the 55-year-old Eden Prairie man to leave the Hennepin County jail Monday afternoon, where he had been held since Wednesday. The Star Tribune generally does not identify suspects before they are charged.
A Somali teenager told the Star Tribune last week that she confronted a white man the night of Nov. 19 in the fast-food restaurant over what she took as an ethnic slight and that he responded by waving a handgun at her and other young people before leaving.
Jihan Abdullahi, 17, said she and a friend both tried in vain to pay for an order with a retail app on their smartphone as the man stood behind them.
"As [we] are walking away, the man says under his breath, 'You were paying with EBT; that's why it didn't work,' " Abdullahi said. EBT, electronic benefit transfer, refers to government-funded food assistance.
Abdullahi said she responded, " 'Just because I'm black you think my friends and I live under EBT?' And he said, 'Yes.' "
A video that has been viewed on Twitter more than 2.1 million times shows several young people in a confrontation with the man. It shows a teenage boy and the man pushing each other before the man stumbled backward and out the door.
