A white Michigan couple was arrested after a video of their altercation with a black woman and her daughter went viral, The Associated Press reports.
The incident is said to have started when 32-year-old Jilian Wuestenberg bumped into Takelia Hill’s 15-year-old daughter Makayla Green, before quickly escalating and ending with Wuestenberg pulling out a handgun.
The altercation took place outside of a Chipotle in Orion Township, roughly 40 miles northwest of Detroit.
“I walked up on the woman yelling at my daughter," Hill said. “She couldn’t see me because her back was to me, but she was in my daughter's face."
“Before I could walk into Chipotle, this woman was coming out, and I had moved out the way so she can walk out," Green told The Detroit News. “She bumped me, and I said, 'Excuse you.' And then she started cussing me out and saying things like I was invading her personal space.”
The confrontation occurred after the family accused Wuestenberg of being “racist.”
Video Shows Moments Leading Up To Gun Being Pulled:
The video begins with Hill and Green demanding an apology from Wuestenberg as she attempts to get into her vehicle.
Eric Wuestenberg then comes around to open the door of the vehicle for his wife, while Hill and Green can be heard telling him to “do something,” to which he replies “who the fuck do you think you guys are?”
Once inside, Wuestenberg rolls down the window and appears to say that she “cares about them,” and that “white people are not racist” before her husband attempts to back their vehicle out of a parking space.
While the video is unclear, it appears that Hill moves behind the vehicle as it’s reversing and proceeds to hit the back window, prompting Jilian Wuestenberg to jump out and remove her weapon. As she points the gun at the two women she can be heard yelling “get the fuck away” while the other women begin shouting.
Wuestenberg eventually got back in the car and drove off.
Wuestenberg, husband arrested:
Wuestenberg and her husband Eric were charged with felonious assault on Thursday.
If convicted, the couple could face up to 4 years in prison and/or a $2000 fine.
Deputies seized two handguns from the couple after they were arrested.
“It is an unfortunate set of circumstances that tempers run high over, basically, not much of an incident,” Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper said.
Sheriff Michael Bouchard said his office received threats in response to the video.
“We don’t see sides. We see facts,” he said. “There’s a lot of tension in our society, a lot of tension among folks and people with each other. I would just say this, we are asking and expect our police — and rightfully so — to deescalate every situation they possibly can, and we should be doing that. But I would say that needs to happen with us individually in our own lives and situations, that we interact with each other and deescalate those moments.”
Eric Wuestenberg was also fired from his job at Oakland University following the backlash to the video.
