A white couple in Michigan was arrested Thursday after the video showed the woman pointing a gun at a black mother and her daughters in a restaurant parking lot, authorities said. The white couple was charged with criminal battery, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said at a press conference.
The video, which has been viewed nearly 13 million times, shows the white woman screaming “Get the shit back” while pointing her gun at the woman filming the incident, who urges others to call the police. It is unclear what caused the confrontation outside of a Chipotle in the municipality of Orion, but authorities said they are investigating.
The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office identified the white couple as Jillian Wuestenberg, 32, and Eric Wuestenberg, 42, The Associated Press reported.
The sheriff said officers arrived on the scene, handcuffed Jillian Wuestenberg, and confiscated weapons from the couple. Bouchard said officers were “presented with two very different stories from two different groups,” and both sides alleged that they felt “extremely threatened.”
A longer video of the encounter on YouTube shows both sides yelling and cursing each other and exchanging accusations before Wuestenberg apparently returned from his vehicle with the weapon.
Bouchard played the two videos along with six different 911 calls, CBS Detroit reported, saying the mother and her two daughters were not armed.
The mother, Takelia Hill, told The Detroit News that her daughter was beaten by the white woman. The video does not show how the incident began, but Hill said her daughter claimed the woman became combative when she asked for an apology.
“I approached the woman who was yelling at my daughter,” Hill told the newspaper. “She couldn’t see me because she had her back to me, but it was on my daughter’s face.”
At one point in the video, Hill or his daughter can be heard calling the couple “very racist and ignorant” and repeatedly challenging Eric Wuestenberg to “do something.”
“You can’t just say that whites are racist,” responds his wife. “Whites are not racist. No one is racist. I care about you.”
Eric Wuestenberg was fired from his job at the University of Oakland on Thursday. “We have seen the video and consider his behavior to be unacceptable. The employee has been notified that the university has terminated his employment,” the school said in a statement.
At his press conference, Bouchard reflected on tense times across the country. “We see situations where the tension is very fast,” he said. “People are nervous and there is a rapid acceleration of anger and sometimes physical violence … My request is that we all try to be that calm voice in the storm and remember that each of us is a human being who deserves respect … It is very sad for me to see what happens in the communities and in this country. “
.
