TX: Story Changes on Open Carry Jack in the Box

There is an interesting short paragraph in a wfaa.com/AP story from Arlington, Texas.   Arlington is next door to Fort Worth, where the widely reported story of Jack in the Box employees being so frightened of some open carriers that they locked themselves in the freezer.  From the Forbes version of the story, directly based on an email from the Fort Worth Police:

In Fort Worth, Texas last week, employees took to the fast food outlet’s freezer, hiding among the frozen burger patties until squad cars arrived at the scene.

“Officers spoke with Jack in the Box employees who reported that they feared for their lives and believed they were being robbed,” said the Fort Worth Police Department in a statement.

“They locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear that the rifle-carrying men would rob them.”

There turned out to be numerous problems with that account.  Employees claimed they never said it.  Jack in the Box officials deny their employees were in fear of their lives or locked themselves in a freezer.    There was only one 911 call, and it was not from  the restaurant, and did not describe anything threatening.  The open carriers have always stated that they went inside, ordered, received their food, paid and left.  It is all covered here. 

Anyone who works in a restaurant knows that it is impossible to lock oneself in a walk in freezer or cooler.

Now to the mention in the wfaa.com/AP story about open carriers in Arlington, Texas.   It is buried about halfway down the story:

Both Open Carry Tarrant County and Open Carry Texas dispute a recent Fort Worth police report that a fast food restaurant worker hid in the freezer recently during a demonstration, or a “walk,” as Open Carry Tarrant County prefers to call it.

 Notice the changes in the story.   Now it is just “a fast food restaurant worker” not “workers”.   This is a big change, because it becomes clear there was no mass panic, and makes it consistent  with the account of the open carriers.  It is possible that one worker was in the cooler for the brief time that the open carriers were being served.   Notice that now, no one claims that people “locked themselves in a freezer”, because that is impossible.   But the biggest inconsistency is not in those changes.  Now that the story has been modified, rolled back, and sanitized, the biggest change is the claim that this modified story is  the one that the open carriers disputed. 

As the story from wfaa.com/AP comes with dual attribution, it is impossible to determine who made those changes.  I have not seen either Open Carry Texas or Open Carry Tarrant County respond to this changed account yet.

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