LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — A 70-year-old Putnam County man’s outburst over a long wait at a Walt Disney World restaurant triggered panic on Christmas Day, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said.
A deputy rushed to the second floor of Bongos Cuban Café shortly before 9:30 p.m. Friday after receiving reports of gunfire in the restaurant, said Lourdes Clayton, a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.
An employee told the deputy that there was no gunfire, but that a diner grew irate while waiting for his food, Clayton said.
Frustrated by a long wait, Luis Ojeda-Reyes, of Georgetown, Fla., summoned a manager, who came to his table to apologize, according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
As the man moved his hands up and down, he hit the manager’s hand and ordered her to leave, an employee told investigators.
The restaurant’s general manager also came to the man’s table to apologize for the long wait, but Ojeda-Reyes tossed his baseball cap on the table, cursed at the general manager and another employee and shoved them both, the report said.
The man then tried to punch the general manager before being escorted out of the restaurant and arrested, officials said.
“The disturbance almost caused a riot at Disney Springs,” a deputy wrote in the report. “The crowd was very large due to [it] being Christmas evening and the guests were running from all directions. A few of the guests were trampled over by people running to the parking garage.”
It’s unknown who yelled out that there was a gun and gunfire.
The general manager told deputies that security cameras recorded footage of the scuffle.
Ojeda-Reyes was charged with battery and booked into the Orange County Jail.
Singer Gloria Estefan and her husband, Emilio Estefan, opened the restaurant in 1997. It's located at the outdoor shopping, dining and entertainment complex previously named Downtown Disney.
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