Prince George’s County Police charged three men Monday with disorderly conduct for the altercation early Sunday morning at the McDonald’s on Route 1 that led to a security guard accidentally shooting a woman, according to officials.
Police charged Clarence Kirksey-Walcott, 22, Thair Walker, 21, and Dion Conley, 22, with disorderly conduct. Officials also arrested Kirksey-Walcott and charged him with second-degree assault.
According to the department’s preliminary investigation, a security guard asked the three men, who were also with a woman, to leave the restaurant for being disruptive, Prince George’s County Police spokeswoman Nicole Hubbard said. When they refused to leave, Kirksey-Walcott and the security guard began to fight.
During the fight, Hubbard said the security guard used pepper spray and then fired his duty weapon, accidentally striking the accompanying woman in the wrist.
An ambulance transported her to a hospital, where she remains in good condition, Hubbard said.
Police did not know if the men are affiliated with the university, but none of the three are listed in the student directory. No other details involving the fight or the security guard are known by police, Hubbard said.
McDonald’s management declined several requests for comment.
In a video obtained by The Diamondback of the fight preceding the gunfire, Kirksey-Walcott is seen first attacking the guard with repeated blows and, at one point, bringing the guard to the ground. The security guard then hit Kirksey-Walcott back with a police baton.
Junior Gabrielle Ellsworth, who was in the McDonald’s during the shooting, said she was four or five feet away from the fight. She described the restaurant as “chaotic” that night.
As people began to crowd the counter, the officer blew a whistle to try to control the crowd. Ellsworth said she then heard the security guard and Kirksey-Walcott get into an argument.
“The guy and the security guard were literally nose to nose, forehead to forehead in each other’s face, yelling back and forth,” Ellsworth, a psychology major, said.
The woman who was shot by the security guard was also behind Kirksey-Walcott, telling the guard that Kirksey-Walcott should be left alone, she said. Meanwhile, two of Kirksey-Walcott’s friends stood behind him in support.
For five to 10 minutes, Ellsworth said the man screamed at the guard while he asked him to calm down and leave the restaurant. Kirksey-Walcott then began to spit and throw punches at the guard, she said, and the guard used pepper spray to try to apprehend him.
Ellsworth was close enough to the incident that she and her roommate felt the cloud of the gas sting their eyes and skin. As Ellsworth ran to the bathroom to try to flush her eyes and stop the burning, she heard a gunshot. In a panic, she ran out of the restaurant.
While looking for her roommate outside, she found the woman “screaming and bleeding,” lying on her right side in the front of the McDonald’s.
“I knelt down to her and I said, ‘OK, we’re just going to breathe, you’re going to be OK,’” Ellsworth said, while her roommate applied pressure to the wound. “She kept asking, ‘Why me? I didn’t do anything; I just want to sleep.’”
After the police came to the McDonald’s and an ambulance took away the woman, Ellsworth said she immediately flushed her eyes.
The security guard stayed at the McDonald’s after the incident. Ellsworth said he poked his head out the door to ask how the victim was.
“He was very concerned about how she was,” she said. “You could tell he was kind of freaking out.”
