CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A teenage girl is shaken up after she was face-to-face with a gunman during a robbery at a west Charlotte Burger King over the weekend.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are still searching for the man involved in the robbery. Investigators said it's not the first time this particular Burger King, on Wilkinson Boulevard off Old Steele Creek Road, has been held up this year.
Jadyn Carter, 15, said she was very excited to have her first job at Burger King. That changed when a masked man allegedly came into the store Friday night waving a gun and demanding money.
“I told him the inside [dining room] was closed and he mumbled something, but I didn’t hear him,” Carter explained. “So, I said it again and then he just pulled up his shirt and started holding the gun at me."
Carter said that was her last shift at the store. CMPD's police report states a man with a handgun robbed the store, Carter says she was left alone with the suspect when her co-workers ran away.
“They all ran to the back and him and I were the only ones in the building at one point," she explained. "I kept telling him the computer wasn’t logged on so I couldn’t open it because I’m not a manager. He then got behind the counter and told me to open this one and so I just opened it for him.”
CMPD said the man got away with $130 in cash.
“After he left, I was just in shock,” she said. “I was surprised and I just called my dad.”
It was a scary call for her father James Carter to receive.
“The first thing that went through my head was getting to my daughter,” James Carter said. “No parent wants to be in that situation of being close to burying a child and that night I came close to burying my child.”
CMPD reported another armed robbery at the same Burger King back in July.
“Around that area, a lot of places have security guards, and we don’t and that should change,” Jadyn Carter said.
James Carter is outraged that no management staff reached out to him about his daughter.
After several attempts to speak to them, he stopped by the restaurant Monday. A sign on the door said the dining room was closed.
Although the general manager was not there, he did eventually speak to a supervisor on site, but he said that is not enough.
“That alone bothers me because my child could have been dead and it’s like you don’t even care,” James Carter said. “This is a 15-year-old child, it was her first job. She was robbed at gunpoint, and she was scared. It just takes a phone call to show your sympathy.”
WCNC Charlotte reached out to Burger King’s general manager and corporate office and has not heard back yet.
Contact Jesse Pierre at jpierrepet@wcnc.com or follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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