Man throws scalding coffee, yells racial slurs at Armour Square gas station attendant: police

Surveillance video shows a man wanted by police for allegedly scalding a gas station employee June 7, 2020, in the 200 block of West 31st Street. | Chicago Police Department

Police are searching for a man who allegedly yelled racial slurs and threw hot coffee at a gas station attendant in Armour Square on the South Side.

The confrontation happened June 7 in the 200 block of West 31st Street, according to Chicago police. A Shell Gas station is located on that block.

The employee told the man that “he shouldn’t waste stuff because he was being messy at the coffee station,” a police spokeswoman said. The man then lobbed racial slurs and threw hot coffee at the employee, burning him in multiple places, police said.

The man threatened the employee before leaving about 10 a.m. in a white two-door Ford F-250 with a blue driver side door, police said. The employee declined medical treatment.

Surveillance video shows a vehicle wanted by police June 7, 2020, in the 200 block of West 31st Street.

The attack came days after a vigilante group of mostly white men patrolled that same block, armed with baseball bats, pipes and other weapons, following widespread anti-racist protests over the officer-involved killing of George Floyd.

On June 3, the group was photographed near Princeton Avenue and 31st Street, where someone in the group allegedly tried to stick something in the bicycle wheel of an Asian man who was passing the group.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded the next day, saying it was “absolutely not appropriate for people to take up arms, bats, pipes, whatever in patrolling neighborhoods.”

Anyone with information on the gas station attack is asked to call Area One Detective Wendy Weller at 312-747-8380.

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