Changing world: Facebook helps police capture machete-wielding attacker at fast food restaurant

posted at 1:03 pm on November 3, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
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There is abundant medical evidence that fast food can be deadly. And judging from recent incidents occurring in fast food restaurants, you don’t have to take a single bite to experience the dangers.

In one incident from September, Paterson (New Jersey) Police got some help from an unlikely source in capturing a man who had violently waved a machete at a branch of U.S. Chicken, a small local chain. The event, which occurred on September 10, was captured by a surveillance camera and plainly shows the machete wielder and two compatriots attacking other customers at the takeout restaurant.

Initially, the video was providing little help to the police. No one who watched the reel was able to identify any of the suspects.

Then department’s Cease Fire Unit got the idea of posting the video on its Facebook page. Within days the case was solved. On Wednesday, five days after the video went live, the guilty party, Tyree Seegers, 22, turned himself in. Paterson Police Captain Heriberto Rodriguez told the New York Daily News that the suspect reported feeling “pressure from everywhere” once the video went viral.

Police have also arrested Seegers’ accomplices, Omar Villota, 22, and Johel Gomez, 20, one of whom can be seen in the video pistol-whipping a man in the head as he tries to exit the restaurant.

At one point on the security reel, Seegers can be seen wildly swinging the machete at everything in sight. Ironically, the one clean blow he lands with the blade strikes—and nearly severs the hand of—one of his buddies.

Seegers has been charged with aggravated assault. No word yet on the charges that Villota and Gomez will face.

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