WMAZ/Channel 13 posted an article to its website and Facebook page last Friday titled “Armed masked men with ski masks show up at Milledgeville restaurant, getting into face of customer, report says.”
“Three men, including two wearing ski masks, showed up at a Milledgeville restaurant with guns Thursday evening, according to a Milledgeville Police Department incident report,” read the article.
On Tuesday, Maj. Linc Boyer with the Milledgeville Police Department called the situation “way overblown.” Boyer said that the incident actually centered around a man who drove to Pickle Barrel and had a conversation on the patio with his girlfriend, who is an employee. Two of the man’s friends also got out of the car and came onto the patio.
“[The other two men] did have on the shiesty masks that some young people like to wear these days,” Boyer said. “It’s all in the (restaurant security) video. One of them did appear to have a firearm in his waistband.”
All three men later were identified, interviewed and ultimately cleared. Boyer said that the employee remained calm and later told detectives that “they weren’t threatening.”
A Pickle Barrel manager called the MPD’s non-emergency number roughly 45 minutes after it was over. An officer responded and generated an incident report. WMAZ then saw the incident report, which was the basis of the news article.
However, according to the incident report, the girlfriend/ employee “stated she was on the porch when a green Dodge Charger pulled up and three males stepped out, two of which were wearing ski masks and had guns” to the responding officer on the day of the incident.
Also, according to the incident report, the girlfriend/ employee added that “one female at a table of four stood up and (was) believed to be telling them to leave...One of the males which did not have a mask on got into one of the female’s faces and they left.”
At no point in the incident report did the girlfriend identify any of the men or point out that one of them was her boyfriend. That came later, after the article began circulating on social media.