Alleged Assault on Gay Man at Shake Shack Sparks Outrage

Alleged Incident at Shake Shack Location

A 28-year-old gay man, Chris­t­ian Din­gus, alleges that he was beat­en by mul­ti­ple Shake Shack employ­ees after he kissed his boyfriend while wait­ing in line for their food at the fast food chain’s Dupont Cir­cle loca­tion in Wash­ing­ton DC on Sat­ur­day night.

Sequence of Events

Din­gus claims that a work­er became aggres­sive when he asked for an update on their order, and his boyfriend tried to dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion. When Din­gus kissed his part­ner, anoth­er work­er told them they could­n’t do that there. 

Din­gus says he walked away, but his boyfriend con­front­ed the work­er, lead­ing to a ver­bal alter­ca­tion and the work­er push­ing Dingus. 

This alleged­ly sparked the oth­er employ­ees to attack Din­gus, punch­ing him in the head.

Cellphone Footage and Investigation

Cell­phone footage shows at least two Shake Shack employ­ees appar­ent­ly land­ing punch­es on Din­gus’ head, though the 30-sec­ond clip does­n’t cap­ture the full sequence of events. 

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment is cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent as a pos­si­ble hate crime, and the employ­ees involved have been sus­pend­ed pend­ing fur­ther review by Shake Shack.

Shake Shack’s Response

Shake Shack stat­ed that the safe­ty and well-being of their guests and team mem­bers are their top pri­or­i­ties, and they have a zero-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for violence. 

The com­pa­ny is ful­ly coop­er­at­ing with the police inves­ti­ga­tion and has sus­pend­ed the employ­ees involved.