One of the things that I really like about living in central Nebraska is that we don’t get a lot of people being shot and killed. It happens, but it’s not a routine part of our lives here on the prairie. So it was a bit of a surprise when a story came across Twitter this afternoon out of Lincoln, Nebraska about a customer going wild with a pickup truck at a Chik-Fil-A restaurant and then reportedly getting shot and killed by uniformed BNSF Railway officer who was coming through the drive-through:
Here's an early story from this afternoon's law enforcement-involved shooting at Chick-fil-A. Our breaking news team (the whole newsroom) is working to update the story. I'll be covering the press conference set to begin at 4 p.m.https://t.co/8gP5Gj9I8D
— Chris Dunker (@ChrisDunkerLJS) October 8, 2019
The Journal-Star’s Chris Dunker took a solid, standard approach to the breaking news story that was a bit of a shocker for the Nebraska state capitol:
A disgruntled customer who left a busy Chick-fil-A restaurant in south Lincoln, then drove his pickup into the building Tuesday afternoon, is dead.
Officer Luke Bonkiewicz, a Lincoln police spokesman, confirmed the person who backed their pickup into the restaurant about 1 p.m. had died and that there is no ongoing threat.
Thomas Arias, 15, was working behind the counter when he heard a commotion in the dining room, looked out and saw a customer flipping tables and throwing food.
“He was yelling, ‘It’s just a f—ing sandwich.’”
But when I saw the news, I couldn’t help but be reminded a classic story of death at a fried chicken restaurant written back in the 1970s by legendary Pulitzer-Prize winning Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan. We’ll let the New Yorker’s Calvin Trillin tell the tale with this excerpt from his 1986 profile of Buchanan:
The fried-chicken story was about a rowdy ex-con named Gary Robinson, who late one Sunday night lurched drunkenly into a Church’s outlet, shoved his way to the front of the line, and ordered a three-piece box of fried chicken. Persuaded to wait his turn, he reached the counter again five or ten minutes later, only to be told that Church’s had run out of fried chicken. The young woman at the counter suggested that he might like chicken nuggets instead. Robinson responded to the suggestion by slugging her in the head. That set off a chain of events that ended with Robinson’s being shot dead by a security guard. Edna Buchanan covered the murder for the Herald—there are policemen in Miami who say that it wouldn’t be a murder without her—and her story began with what the fried-chicken faction still regards as the classic Edna lead:
“Gary Robinson died hungry.”
He wanted fried chicken, the three-piece box for $2.19. Drunk, loud, and obnoxious, he pushed ahead of seven customers on line at a fast-food chicken outlet. The counter girl told him that his behavior was impolite She calmed him down with sweet talk, and he agreed to step to the back of the line. His turn came just before closing time, just after the fried chicken ran out.
He punched the counter girl so hard her ears rang, and a security guard shot him – three times.”
I am often sad that Buchanan did all her newspaper writing before the internet era because there is no easy way to find her articles online. But she did do a couple of books about her experiences that I highly recommend:
She also wrote a host of mystery novels after leaving the Miami Herald, but it was her work as a police beat reporter that really made her stand out.