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Racist incident at Five Guys in Grand Junction going viral online
A racist incident at the Five Guys location in Grand Junction this week was captured on video and has quickly received thousands of views online. An employee who was subjected
A racist incident at the Five Guys location in Grand Junction this week was captured on video and has quickly received thousands of views online. An employee who was subjected to the racial abuse and filmed the encounter alleges he was fired by Five Guys the next day.
The footage, which depicts a man wearing a Donald Trump shirt berating several Latino employees of being “beaners” as a woman next to him wordlessly films the employees, — as of 4 p.m. on Thursday afternoon — has received 12,000 upvotes, 3,200 shares and 1,400 comments on the Reddit page r/PublicFreakouts, a page with 4.7 million members. Video of the incident has also received hundreds of comments and upvotes on the page r/GrandJunction.
In the video, a man who just received his food yells at employees, “F- — you, you f--- — beaners! Europeans f--- — colonized this f-- — country, and you f--- — beaners are f--- — invading it! You’re f--- — invaders! You should be f--- — ashamed!”
As the man and woman leave the restaurant, the man tries to slam the door as he continues hurling slurs. The door is built so that it can not physically be slammed, so the man’s slamming motion resulted in the door closing slowly anyway, which one of the berated employees noted and laughed about.
One video capturing the incident provides names for the man and woman harassing employees, but The Daily Sentinel has not yet independently confirmed their identities, so no names will be provided in this story.
The Reddit posts contain speculation that one of the people involved is a medical professional at a clinic at Community Hospital in Grand Junction.
In a statement to The Daily Sentinel, Community Hospital stated that the person some claim to be a clinic employee is not employed through the hospital but rather is associated with the hospital through their work with one of the hospital’s clinics. The Sentinel has not confirmed this person’s identity or occupation.
“We have watched the video and in no way condone any behavior that is disrespectful toward another person,” the hospital said.
Mario Quijano claims to be one of the employees who filmed the encounter. He posted a video on the social media platform TikTok on Thursday discussing the incident further, confirming that the filmed incident took place in Grand Junction.
“He approached me and he said, ‘As a Latino man, who did you vote for, who did you support?’ I said it was Kamala and he asked me why,” Quijano said. “I gave him my reasoning on why I don’t support Trump. He didn’t appreciate that, I guess, and that’s when he proceeded to call me the racial slur. I proceeded to tell him to leave, he refused, and that’s when I started recording.”
In this screenshot from a video filmed Tuesday evening, a man, accompanied by a woman filming with her phone camera, berates Latino employees at the Grand Junction Five Guys with racial slurs. The employee who filmed the encounter alleges that the restaurant fired him the next day.
This incident took place Tuesday night as election results were still coming in. The next day, Quijano said, he was fired by the restaurant after a complaint. He said in his video that he had a witness to his firing.
“(Wednesday) night, I go to work and, unfortunately, I was laid off. They fired me because, apparently, someone else shared the video, which had his and his wife’s actual names, their workplace and all that personal information. I was accused of doing that, but it wasn’t me. I showed my manager the proof, I showed her the video, and they said, ‘Oh well.’ I begged to keep my job because I need it, I have a family,” Quijano said.
“Today, they’re claiming that I quit, that I got very emotional, that I got angry and quit and left. I’ll be honest: I did get emotional. I got fired for trying to stand up for myself. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I’ve never been called that before.”
The owner of the Grand Junction Five Guys, Jeff Parker, provided a statement to The Daily Sentinel on Thursday:
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We are not at liberty to discuss employment personnel matters and we continue to investigate the situation. We expect our employees to treat all customers with respect and expect our customers to treat our employees with respect as well. We don’t have all the details but are concerned by what we are seeing and will investigate and address as needed.”
I know you guys claim Latinos are "White adjacent" and won't face racism in the MAGA movement but, unless you're a White Hispanic with no accent, this is cap. Blacks and Non-White Hispanics have to move carefully in today's America.
