A white couple who went viral on Wednesday (July 1) after pulling a gun on a black mother and daughter have been charged with felonious assault. Identified as Jillian and Eric Wuestenberg, the couple became engaged in an argument with mother and teenage daughter Takelia Hill and Makayla Green in a parking lot in Orion Township, Michigan on Wednesday night.
“It is an unfortunate set of circumstances that tempers run high over, basically, not much of an incident,” Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper said on Thursday (July 2) in a press release.
The viral clip began after Jillian had allegedly bumped into Green outside of a Chipotle. Green detailed the incident while speaking with Detroit News.
“Before I could walk into Chipotle, this woman was coming out, and I had moved out the way so she can walk out,” she told the outlet. “She bumped me, and I said, ‘Excuse you.’ And then she started cussing me out and saying things like I was invading her personal space.”
Green said she called her mother over because she was afraid.
“I walked up on the woman yelling at my daughter,” Hill told the outlet. “She couldn’t see me because her back was to me, but she was in my daughter’s face.”
The argument continued in the shopping plaza’s parking lot, where Hill and Green accused Jillian of being racist. The woman reportedly denied the claims and got into her car, with Eric in the driver’s seat. Hill claimed that the couple began backing up the car and tried to hit her daughter. Hill hit the back of the car with her hand to allegedly alert the drivers, which is when Jillian could be seen getting out of the car with a gun.
According to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, both Jillian and Eric have concealed pistol licenses. In the video, Hill could be heard urging her daughter to call the police. When authorities arrived, they reportedly seized two handguns from the couple and detained them that night.
“We don’t see sides. We see facts,” Bouchard told the Associated Press. “There’s a lot of tension in our society, a lot of tension among folks and people with each other. I would just say this, we are asking and expect our police — and rightfully so — to deescalate every situation they possibly can, and we should be doing that. But I would say that needs to happen with us individually in our own lives and situations, that we interact with each other and deescalate those moments.”
The couple was arraigned on Thursday (July 2) and have been released on a $50,000 bond. As per their bond agreement, they must surrender all of their firearms.