ST. AUGUSTIN, Florida (AP). The Florida resident faces multiple charges after sheriff’s deputies said he threatened two McDonald’s diners with a stun gun and a knife and shouted, “Get out of my country.”
It happened early Wednesday in St. Augustine on Florida’s Atlantic coast.
Mohamed Galal and Zayad Said told the St. John’s deputies that 60-year-old John J. Smith approached them with a knife and asked if they were “American.” The arrest report says Smith shouted that they “don’t deserve American food.”
The report says that at the time of his arrest, Smith said that “they killed my son,” a US Marine who died in combat in Afghanistan.
Smith faces charges of aggravated assault, trespassing and burglary.
The prosecutor’s office will determine if the incident was a hate crime. The prison records do not include a lawyer.