Montai Boynton threw a punch at Chuck E. Cheese’s, but he says he didn’t start the fight.
That punch was thrown only after he confronted an employee who had mistreated his 15-year-old sister, he says, and the employee pushed him.
The fight, which started around 6:30 p.m. Saturday, sent about 100 people fleeing into the parking lot and resulted in the arrests of Boynton, three of his siblings, and a juvenile.
Montai Boynton, 22, was charged with disorderly conduct. His brother Kelly, 21, and sisters Kiara, 20, and Kimberly, 19, were charged with disorderly conduct and obstruction of an officer.
Montai Boynton says it started when his sister complained to an employee about not getting her food order. After a heated conversation, she started to approach a manager when another employee grabbed her and yanked her back, Montai Boynton said.
Then he told his sister he’d handle the situation. “And that’s when he pushed me,” he said. “I punched him in the face.”
A restaurant manager then hopped over a counter and punched Boynton’s sister Kimberly, Montai Boynton said. Then two men identified themselves to him as federal agents and tried to apprehend him, but they didn’t show any ID, he said. Then Kimberly Boynton tried to pull the men away from her brother.
“And that’s when it went to the outside,” Montai Boynton said of the people who fled the restaurant.
His arrest report states that he repeatedly refused to leave the area when told and was loudly cursing and threatening people.
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, the executive vice president of marketing for Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company said fights at the restaurants are “atypical,” though the newspaper cited incidents at Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants around the nation. Some police departments across the country, however, said disruptions happen at Chuck E. Cheese’s more often than at other nearby restaurants, including bars.
In the most recent incident, in Susquehanna Township, Pa., a woman grabbed video game tokens out of a 6-year-old boy’s hand.
The boy then got his mother, who began screaming at the other woman, then a man grabbed one of the women by the throat and pushed her.
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