A Taco Bell manager in Texas poured boiling water on a woman and a girl who asked for their incorrect order to be remade, a lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks damages in excess of $1 million after Brittany Davis and a girl identified as C.T. saw their lives “forever changed” during a June 17 stop at a Taco Bell in Dallas. The pair had asked for their $31 order to be corrected before the alleged attack, according to the filing.
“Instead of simply correcting the order, a Taco Bell employee threatened to fight C.T., a minor, and the Taco Bell store manager violently and without warning poured a bucket of boiling water over C.T.’s and Brittany’s heads, shoulder, breasts and legs, causing excruciating second- and third-degree burns on their bodies,” the lawsuit claims.
The pair were left “burning from the inside out” due to the scalding water that soaked their clothes against their bodies, the lawsuit claims.
“The store they believed would be a place of service and safety quickly turned into a place of horrors,” according to the 19-page Dallas County lawsuit.
The couple had gone through a drive-thru three different times to get their proper order, but Taco Bell workers refused to correct it. An employee then let them into the locked dining room and secured the door shut behind them, according to the lawsuit.
Davis and the girl then discussed their order with Taco Bell workers for 10 minutes before employees “became combative,” the lawsuit claims. A female manager who wasn’t involved in the conversation then came from behind a counter with a “scalding bucket of water” and doused the pair, according to the filing.
Davis and the girl tried to leave the restaurant, but the door was still locked. They managed to get outside just as the manager returned with a second bucket of boiling water, the lawsuit alleges.
“As this family was leaving the parking lot, a Taco Bell employee came outside the front door, laughing, clapping and taunting the family – adding insult to horrific injury,” the filing states.
Davis started having seizures due to the shock of the attack while on the way to a hospital, where the girl ran naked into an emergency room after stripping off her clothes soaked with scalding water, according to the lawsuit.
Davis, of Dallas, had at least 10 seizures and deep burns to her chest and stomach, while the girl had severe burns to her face, chest, legs, arms and stomach, the lawsuit claims.
“When C.T. was released home from the hospital, her mother had to remove all mirrors from the walls, as C.T. could not bear to see her own face,” the filing reads. “The burns to the rest of her body caused her skin to bubble the size of softballs.”
A message seeking comment from Taco Bell reps was not immediately returned early Tuesday. The chain’s parent company, Yum! Brands, a local franchisee and two employees not identified by name in the suit did not respond to requests for comment, the Dallas Morning News reported Monday.
A judge on Friday ordered the Taco Bell location to preserve and turn over photos and video footage from the restaurant during the time of the incident, the newspaper reported.
Dallas police responded to the restaurant in the 11800 block of Adams Road after getting reports of an aggravated assault and an assault on June 17, department officials told the newspaper.
The victim in the aggravated assault case is the suspect in the assault complaint, police spokeswoman Melinda Gutierrez said, adding that one woman was badly burned while another was scratched during an altercation.
I find it outrageous that the persons who poured boiling water on these persons were not arrested!
Would appreciate more details about this. Where specifically and so forth. This, if accurate, is absolutely unacceptable
Sounds as if the ‘victims’ PLANNED it to cause an altercation, or to get ‘free’ food. They went through the drive through line 3 times ???? C’mon, they were up to no good. Being doused with scalding water was stupid.
Any normal person would :
1) beat them
2) get their photos and say never come back.
Doesn’t matter what color people they are; but it seems they always call out whites when awful things like this happens. But it’s downright sickening what happened in this situation. But I would not have driven through the drive thru 3 times trying to get my order corrected. I would have pulled in the parking lot & went inside right off the bat & talked to a manager. Now on to the manager that wasn’t even in the conversation, that went back & come back up front with the boiling water. I was manager at Popeyes for over 14 years. I don’t CARE who you are. When you are in charge of a place of business & all of of the employees there; you do EVERYTHING in your power to try & help the customers & also keep your employees safe & from losing their cool. In this situation; I would have talked to the customers myself. If things kept on escalating; I would have then got the food back & gave them their money back. And if the customers were still irate; I would have got one of my employees to go to the back & call 911. For some reason; a lot of this story does NOT add up. They describe these two girls as being distraught & in total horror. And one had 10 seizures just on the way to the hospital??? Think about 2nd & 3rd degree burns. In less than 6 days; a suit in excess of 1 million dollars has been filed. But nothing said about arrests being made. The manager would have been taken in that night for pouring boiling water on two individuals. The two women were so bad off & so distraught. One of them had to have ALL the mirrors removed before she went home, because she couldn’t bear to see her face. But within 5 days you are able to hire an attorney & have everything put together for a lawsuit of over 1 mill. without even knowing what kind of skin grafts my have to be done on the 3rd degree burns especially. And not even knowing what all the bills are going to cost in the long run Your pain & suffering. Seems more about just getting the money as quickly as possible & not even thinking of anything else. 5 DAYS??? Like I said. Something about this story doesn’t add up. JMHO.