photo by: Contributed screenshot

This screenshot shows a text message reportedly sent to a 17-year-old Wendy's employee by a white co-worker on Friday, July 17. The Journal-World has edited out expletives in this image, including the N-word.

A Black teenage employee of a fast-food restaurant in Lawrence was threatened and called the N-word by one of his white co-workers, the boy’s mother said.

Tiffany Lewis, of Lawrence, spoke out on social media on Sunday about her son’s experience with a co-worker at the Wendy’s at 523 W. 23rd St. She told the Journal-World that she believes the issue and the store’s handling of it were products of systemic racism.

The co-worker, 26-year-old Benjamin McDonald, was later arrested on suspicion of criminal threat and on a probable cause warrant for multiple drug felonies, plus two charges of criminal threat unrelated to this alleged incident. He is no longer employed at the store, the owner confirmed Monday.

Lewis said McDonald had called her son multiple times. She also posted screenshots of messages from a group chat between several Wendy’s employees as well as a text message conversation between McDonald and her 17-year-old son on July 17.

“You better watch your back. Everywhere you go. I don’t care who your daddy is,” a text message says, ending by calling the teen three expletives. The teen’s father is Anthony Lewis, superintendent of Lawrence Public Schools.

The teen responds, “keep that energy, on sight,” to which McDonald then responds with the N-word. Lewis said her son sent a screenshot of that message to the store manager on Friday morning.

photo by: Douglas County Sheriff’s Office

Benjamin Alan McDonald, pictured in July 2020

A July 16 group message shows the conversation that preceded the reported exchange. McDonald asks the teen where he is, apparently questioning whether the boy was at baseball as he’d said. The boy responds that if McDonald is not his mama, daddy or Jesus, McDonald has no business questioning him; he then writes, “if I say i’m at baseball, then i’m at baseball.”

McDonald responds with a message, including multiple swear words, telling the boy to “grow up,” then says “I ain’t gonna take that kinda lip from anyone. Period. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

The Journal-World was not able to independently verify the accuracy of the screenshots, but Lewis said she sent them to Lawrence police. That led to McDonald’s arrest.

Lewis said that when her son has been late to work in the past, the store manager has called his parents. She questions why, when her minor son was threatened, she and her husband weren’t told about it.

She said she’s spoken with the store manager, store owner and a district manager, and she’s gotten different timelines on an internal investigation. She said the story keeps changing, but that she was told the employee had quit before an investigation could be completed.

Lewis said she felt that the company failed to protect her son. If the tables were turned, and her son was a 26-year-old man who had threatened a white teen, she said she believes the situation would have been different.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that my son would have been fired immediately, especially with the evidence that was at hand,” Lewis said. “There wouldn’t have even needed to be an investigation, and he would have had charges pressed against him.”

Kirk Williams, a 25-year Wendy’s franchisee and the owner of the 23rd Street Wendy’s and 15 other stores around northeast Kansas, told the Journal-World that the company has an employee handbook that addresses what employees should do “if anything like that occurs,” and he said those policies were followed in this case. He said the now-former employee will not be allowed back on the property.

“We think it’s an isolated incident,” Williams said. “It’s certainly unfortunate and we are very hopeful that this individual faces the appropriate punishment for the things he did, but he’s no longer at our employ.”

Asked whether he would take further action, such as racial or bias-based training for staff, Williams said that “we are absolutely going to reiterate our policies and our standards to all of our stores.”

Lewis said that’s not enough, and “with what’s happening with young African American males,” she doesn’t have faith the situation will be handled appropriately.

“It’s too much, too many errors for me to believe anything that (Williams is) saying,” she said. “… He wants me to let him handle it and that’s not going to happen. He needs to address the issues. … He’s hired people of all colors, but that still doesn’t mean that (he) addressed systemic racism correctly.”

The only response she was satisfied with was from the Lawrence Police Department, Lewis said. She said the detective handled the situation quickly.

Lewis said her son doesn’t want to quit working at Wendy’s because he didn’t do anything wrong, but that she needs to know he’ll be protected, so it’s a tough conversation they’ve been having.

McDonald was arrested around 3 p.m. Sunday on suspicion of criminal threat and cultivating a controlled substance, according to the Douglas County Jail booking log. He was charged with both felonies at a first appearance Monday afternoon.

McDonald was also charged in a separate case in which he is facing two high-severity felony charges: unlawful cultivation of a controlled substance of between four and 50 marijuana plants, and possession of between 450 grams and 30 kilograms — or between 1 and about 66 pounds — of marijuana with intent to distribute. He was also charged with two additional felony counts of criminal threat and one count of possession of psilocybin mushrooms, a misdemeanor.

On Monday afternoon, a judge granted McDonald a $23,000 own-recognizance bond. He was to be released with pretrial supervision, including electronic monitoring by a GPS ankle bracelet. He was also ordered not to have contact with the Lewises.