Charges Filed Against Brooklyn Park McDonald’s Drive-through Carjacking Suspect

Charges were filed Thursday against an 18-year-old Brooklyn Park man accused of carjacking a McDonald’s drive-through customer.

Michael Lee is charged with 2nd-degree aggravated robbery and fleeing a peace officer. Charging documents show Lee is a tenant of the Huntington Place Apartments. Police arrested Lee following a high-speed chase on Tuesday night.

The carjacking incident happened Sunday at about 10 p.m. at the McDonald’s on West Broadway Avenue, police said.

According to the criminal complaint:

The victim told police a man was asking people for food and money. The man then approached the victim’s car and asked for a ride to Cub Foods. The victim told the man he was “not comfortable” doing so. The complaint said the man then reached into his front jacket pocket and pointed what the victim believed was a gun at him through the jacket.

That action caused the victim to get out of his car. The complaint said the man then got into the vehicle, striking a snowbank before speeding away.

Police arrested Lee two days later after a 911 call from staff at Zanewood Recreation Center about a vehicle driving through their lot at a high rate of speed. The caller mentioned the suspect was “flashing his hand like he had a gun.” A Brooklyn Park police officer spotted the vehicle and determined it was the same one reported stolen from the McDonald’s two nights before, the complaint said.

The suspect took off at a high-rate of speed and tried “to evade the officer’s attempt at a PIT maneuver to stop the vehicle,” the complaint said. The officer was eventually able to stop the vehicle in the area of 85th Avenue North and County Road 81.

In a post-Miranda statement, Lee later admitted to police that he took the car from the McDonald’s customer after initially saying the car belonged to his girlfriend. He also said he thought the “shiesty” mask he had on “made the guy scared,” the complaint said.

The complaint said that Lee told police he did not have a gun on him, but admitted “the guy thought he had a gun” when he hopped in the victim’s car and drove away.

Lee is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Friday.

Also See: 2021 Brooklyn Park Murder Suspect Arrested in Virginia

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