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Burger King: Windows Smashed Out By Employees At Minnesota Restaurant, ‘I guess I was a little scared,’ Employee States

By Louis Babcock
Published on: 11:37 PST, Apr 10, 2016

On Friday night, Burger King employees in Coon Rapids, Minnesota began to break the windows in their restaurant as a response to a simple phone call. The caller claimed the restaurant was experiencing an issue with their gas line that could cause a massive explosion.

The voice on the other end of the phone, which called the Burger King restaurant, stated that he was a member of the fire department. That alone was enough to convince the employees to destroy their restaurant by smashing out their windows.

An employee at a nearby gas station quickly called the police due to the employee believing that the Burger King restaurant was experiencing an intense act of vandalism. By the time the local police arrived at the restaurant Friday evening, it was established that the Burger King employees were victimized into destroying their establishment due to a prank caller.

The following account of events comes from a statement given by police officer Captain Tom Hawley.

When police arrived on the scene to the report of vandalism, the manager of the establishment quickly explained that it was her employees that were bashing out the windows due to what she believed to be an emergency with gas coming into the building.

The manager stated that a phone call was received in which the person on the other end of the line identified himself as an official with the fire department. The caller portrayed himself in such a way that the manager believed he was who he claimed to be. The manager stated that the prankster appeared to have an intimate knowledge of fire systems that would be found in commercial buildings such as the one in this particular Burger King. The prank caller gave the impression that he was monitoring the restaurant’s fire system and gas line from an off-site location.

The manager was directed by the caller to check the safety devices on the fire system that was installed in the restaurant. As the prank call continued, the man on the other end of the phone claimed that he was able to tell that the “gas pressure inside the building was rising.”

The prankster finally got to the point that he convinced the manager that the gas level was reaching a critical level. The caller convinced the manager that the gas buildup was rising to the point that this Burger King restaurant was in danger of exploding. The caller claimed that, in order to ensure the safety of the building, employees, and customers, the windows in the building had to be destroyed in order to allow the gas to escape.

The manager and employees quickly ran out to their vehicles in order to find tools they could use to break out the windows. The Burger King staff acted so rapidly that, by the time the police arrived, all the windows on the ground level had been destroyed. The damage created from the broken windows is said to amount to thousands of dollars. One of the employees was injured from a shard of glass.

One of the Burger King employees, Ethan Grewe, commented about how he was feeling during the chaos of breaking out the windows.

“I guess I was a little scared. My other co-workers were doing it, so I just followed along.”

The local fire department was dispatched to the scene in order to determine if there was a potential danger involving gas. The fire department was able to definitively establish that there was no issue with gas in the building. It was at this point that police confirmed the phone call was a prank.

Authorities are now in the process of attempting to trace the call and find the prankster. Officials are also in contact with police in California and Oklahoma who have recently had restaurants in their states victimized by a prank caller.

The Burger King was open on Saturday, but the windows that were destroyed were covered with boards.

Do you think the Burger King employees should have realized they were being pranked before they shattered their windows?

[Image Via AP Photo/LM Otero, File]

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