Woman deemed competent after series of run-ins with police at restaurants
Athena Marie Fouser was arrested (from left) 4 times in 2022 and then at a Burger King on March 17, 2023. Then,She was booked on the same charges with the same photo after being deemed competent, April 29, 2024. (Lake Co. Sheriff’s Office)
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LEESBURG, Fla. (TND) — A woman described as having “bright red hair” went into a Burger King after police say she was “issued trespass warnings from numerous establishments throughout the day.”
That day was March 17, 2023, and the woman would leave the fast-food restaurant in Florida under arrest for disorderly conduct.
“I knew this female to be Ms. Athena Fouser based on extensive personal knowledge/experience,” a police officer wrote in the arrest report. “I observed the defendant enter the parking lot and approach my vehicle while screaming at passing vehicles.
“Two females followed the defendant as they attempted to get my attention.
“One of the females, an employee of Burger King, advised that the defendant entered into the establishment and immediately entered into the restroom.
“The defendant entered and exited the restroom numerous times, causing concern from several patrons.
“The victim conducted a check of the restroom and found that they defendant had urinated in the restroom, making statements pertaining to people trying to kill her.
“She then began to shout at the victim, causing her to fear for her own safety and the safety of the patrons.
“Based on the defendant’s actions, coupled with her demonstrated corruption of public morals and sense of public decency, she was found to have committed the offense of disorderly conduct.”
Fouser was cleared by paramedics and held in jail for almost four months, even though prosecutors decided not to pursue the disorderly conduct charge after only two months.
She was also issued a trespass warning from Burger King, and was still facing other criminal charges at the time.
Fouser’s arrest report from February 2022 said she was “banging on the windows” of a store in a plaza where she had a trespass warning.
Then, her arrest report from November 2022 said she was “panhandling in the area and harassing customers for money.”
In both cases, she changed her not guilty pleas to no contest and was sentenced to time served.
But there’s still an open case from the morning of Sept. 30, 2022.
The owner of a different restaurant had gotten a call from an employee who told her “the front door was open and the business was a mess,” the arrest report said.
“The victim further discovered many things inside of the business had been moved.
“The floors and many of the tables were also dirty and covered in an unknown adhesive substance possibly from soda.”
She said the missing items believed to have been stolen were two Puerto Rico flags, two GrubHub tablets, an Amazon tablet, a miniature Puerto Rican punching bag, and $30 in cash.
She also said she “believes the business’ kitchen was used to cook food.”
The employee told police she saw a woman at the front entrance “wearing a black dress with a small Puerto Rican flag around her hair and a large Puerto Rican flag draped over her shoulders.”
The officer determined there were no signs of forced entry, so the door may have been left unlocked, and Fouser was found early the following morning after a call about a suspicious person at yet another restaurant.
According to the arrest report, “The defendant had a Samsung tablet, Puerto Rican flag, and money in her possession.
“Due to statements the defendant made at the time, the items in the defendant’s [sic] were taken as evidence and the defendant was placed under a Baker Act,” which is the Florida law that puts a person in a mental health treatment program.
Then, four days later, she was charged and she reportedly told police, “I took $15 and that’s all.”
In late April 2024, the state deemed Fouser “competent to proceed and no longer meets criteria for commitment.”
She pleaded not guilty to charges of burglary of an unoccupied structure and petit theft-2nd offense.
Fouser, 44, is due back in court on Friday, May 10.
Woman in viral video seen assaulting Hazie’s staff arrested for public intoxication
by: Alex Baker, Dan Kerman
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A woman seen verbally and physically assaulting restaurant staff in a viral video that ripped across the internet Monday was arrested for public intoxication, KRON4 has learned. The video, which was posted Sunday by an employee of Hazie’s in SF’s Hayes Valley, opens with the unidentified woman berating staff while filming them with her phone.
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed the woman’s name as Shireen Afkari.Strava fires woman at center of SF viral restaurant video
Miguel Marchese, a bartender at Hazie’s, told KRON4 the incident occurred sometime around 9 p.m., after the woman and her date were refused service because they appeared intoxicated.
(Watch the video in the player above)
“The night was quite chaotic, the couple came in, they were requesting dinner service,” Marchese told KRON4. “Initially, the server verbalized to me that she could tell that her table was not only intoxicated, but perhaps on some other substances and they were giving her quite a rough time and being quite verbally abrasive with her and then I do believe after that, they asked for the manager to intervene.”
According to Marchese, after speaking with the couple, the manager made the call to not serve the couple.Customers flocking to celebrity-chef founded SF restaurant after viral video
“He retracts her cocktails from the table, because I just made them, he brings them back and he simply tells me, ‘They’ve had enough to drink, we shouldn’t serve them anymore.’ And then later, it just kind of spiraled into chaos,” he said.
As the video continues, Afkari is seen striking the phone of someone filming the incident.
“I was hoping that when I told her to leave the bar, physically leave the bar, that’s when things just spiraled out of control. She ends up assaulting one of the bussers who was recording the situation,” Marchese said.
Later in the video, the woman is seen getting into more physical altercations at the bar. At one point, another woman sitting at the bar, later identified as a restaurant employee, gets up and takes the woman to the ground, before returning to her seat.
Eventually, a group of staff members and customers are seen restraining the woman and her date and ushering them outside of the restaurant to the sound of rousing cheers from customers.
“I knew at the end of the day, we just had to get them out of the building,” Marchese said.
But that was not the end of it. The scene continued outside the restaurant and at some point in the melee, Afkari grabbed ahold of Marchese’s hair.
“As soon as I’m about to let her go, because she’s off the property, she’s someone else’s issue, she grabs my hair really tight, because I have very long hair,” Marchese said. “She wraps my hair around her hand and just pulls on it for dear life. It was quite painful.”
Marchese said she only let go of his hair after he grabbed her phone.
“I’m able to grab her phone hoping it would give her an incentive to let me go, and it does. I grab the phone, she lets go of my hair finally, and I throw it. I throw it far away so they can essentially wander off, and we can go back into building and lock the door, like throwing a bone at a dog that’s attacking you just to distract her.”
After Marchese threw Afkari’s phone, she can be seen running toward him in the video. In the video, the bartender appears to stick a leg out to trip the woman who falls face first onto the sidewalk.
As Afkari gets up from the sidewalk, she is heard berating her date as he helps her up. The man then gets into a brief altercation with restaurant staff before the two of them are ushered down the sidewalk, away from the restaurant.
“I kind of just need to neutralize this situation just for a quick second and yeah, she stumbles on the concrete, and you think that’d be enough, but it wasn’t,” said Marchese. “She gets back up she yells at her boyfriend that he’s not man enough and he starts to re-engage in fighting with some other people.”
It was at that point that the police arrived.
“It was quite chaotic, but eventually, at that time, the police arrive just right after that and they start to detain them,” he said.
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed that officers responded to a business on the 500 block of Hayes Street about 9:41 p.m. Sunday regarding a person who was escorted from the business.
Officers arrived on the scene and located the woman who was removed from the business. SFPD developed probable cause to arrest her for public intoxication. She was transported to SF County Jail and detained for public intoxication.
