MONROE COUNTY, Mich. – Joe Mahmoud, his wife, and their three little girls -- ages 8, 4, and 6 months -- took a trip to the Erie Orchards and Cider Mill in Monroe County.
It started out fine; the family went into the store and bought several things. The children wanted to pick fruit, so Mahmoud asked a worker if that was possible.
“He said, ‘To be honest, there’s no peaches back there, and the apples aren’t ready, and what you’d find will probably be rotten,’” Mahmoud said. The worker reportedly told him to let the kids go back and pick fruit, and to not worry about paying for anything.
After the children finished their fun excursion, Mahmoud and the baby went to the truck while his wife and two other children used the bathroom. That’s when Mahmoud says the owner opened his truck door and said, “Where’s the bag?”
Mahmoud said he pointed to it and the owner examined it. Then the owner reportedly opened the rear door of Mahmoud’s truck and started rifling through the baby’s diaper bag.
What happened next was captured on Mahmoud’s cellphone. The owner was heard saying, “Every Muslim that comes in here steals from me.”
The owner told Mahmoud he couldn’t leave because the police were on the way. Mahmoud said he waited for 40 minutes with his increasingly upset wife and daughters, and then told the owner he was leaving.
Mahmoud says as he slowly backed out, the owner “just went crazy.”
Our attempts to reach the owner have not been successful, but neighbors told Local 4 that he’s been receiving death threats. Police drove by to check on the orchard property while our crews were there.
Mahmoud hopes the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department investigates what happened to his family, and he’s planning civil litigation.
