Photo: San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office
A group of McDonald’s employees are being recognized for their fast thinking after they helped rescue a woman from a man who had allegedly threatened violence against her.
The woman entered the McDonald’s in Lodi, California, just after 2 p.m. on Tuesday and asked an employee behind the counter to call police, the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office said in astatement.
She gave the worker her car’s license plate number, and also asked if they would hide her before she headed to the bathroom.
“While in the drive-thru, she mouthed to an employee, ‘HELP ME.’ Just then, deputies arrived and spoke with employees inside the restaurant,” the statement read.
The McDonald’s staffers rushed to the officers outside, where they found the woman in the driver’s seat of a vehicle and Valenzuela, 35, in the passenger’s seat.
The “shaken” woman told police during the course of their investigation that Valenzuela had allegedly been violent with her in the past. She alleged that he had demanded that day she take him to visit his family and threatened her life with a firearm, police said.
A gun was found in the trunk of the car, which had been stolen out of state, police allege.
Valenzuela, whose jail records do not list an attorney, was booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on charges of criminal threats, stolen property and being in possession of a firearm as a felon, police said. His bail is set at $360,000.
It was not immediately clear if he has entered a plea.
Part of the reason the McDonald’s employees were equipped to handle the situation is because the restaurant is a designated “safe place,” a McDonald’s spokeswoman told Fox affiliateKTXL.
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“We are a safe place, so we are trained on how to handle crisis situations like that. Our restaurant manager had our employees actually hold up the drive-thru line so that we were then able to stop that car from moving forward,” the spokeswoman said.
A “safe place” means that anyone who finds themselves in crisis or in need of a place to stay can come there for help, according to the Golden State McDonald’s website. Other locations include YMCAs, libraries, fire stations and grocery stores.
“I think it was one of those fight or flight kind of things,” the spokeswoman said of the staffers’ quick aid. “They just took over and they didn’t hesitate.”
source: people.com
