Holly MatkinBrooklyn, NY – A suspect who was released without bail after smashing up a McDonald’s restaurant with a hatchet last month has been released without bail yet again officer arrested him for allegedly trying to flee from police on an expensive stolen bike (video below).
Cell phone footage showing 31-year-old Michael Palacios fighting with customers and using a hatchet to smash tables and a glass wall at a Manhattan McDonald’s approximately three weeks ago quickly went viral.
The violent rampage occurred at the Delancey Street fast-food joint at approximately 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 16, the New York Post reported.
An Uber Eats driver who recorded the mayhem said Palacios became enraged after a woman “rejected” his advances, but Palacios said the incident actually began after a security guard refused to let him use the restaurant bathroom.
Palacios told the New York Post that he ended up in an argument with several patrons, three of whom began assaulting him.
“I showed composure. People just see blankness, but I was thinking,” Palacios told the New York Post. “I was processing. You ever download a program and the Apple sign spins? That was me processing.”
He then calmly reached into his backpack, pulled out a hatchet, and proceeded to smash tables and a large pane of glass inside the restaurant, the video showed.
Customers quickly scurried out of the rampaging suspect’s path as glass shattered onto the ground.
“I wanted to intimidate them,” Palacios told the New York Post. “The average person doesn’t train to fight off three people. I’m just lucky, I guess, that I drink enough water, and I do enough pushups to fend off three young adults. I’m just a regular guy. No military training.”
He also touted the merits of carrying a “tomahawk” as opposed to a firearm, according to the New York Post.
“Think about it. If you only think that the thing you can protect yourself with is a gun, we’re all going to go to f–king jail,” Palacios told the paper. “With a hatchet, I have my options — throw it or just smash a f–king table. With a gun, all you do is shoot.”
“I’m not unhinged. I’m not psychotic,” he noted. “I just did what anybody would do when being pummeled… It’s not luck that they didn’t get chopped up. I didn’t chop them up because I didn’t want to.”
He also admitted that he was drinking alcohol prior to the brawl, according to WABC.
Palacios fled the scene after his violent rampage but was arrested on Ludlow Street on charges of weapons possession and criminal mischief a short while later, the New York Post reported.
He was released without bail within the day under New York’s lax bail reform laws.
“Everybody’s talking about how I should be in jail,” Palacios told the New York Post. “I did my 18 hours, bro. What else do you want? Why do I have to be in jail? I’m not going to make it a race thing just because I’m big and black.”
He further argued that crime has always been a problem in New York City before recounting an incident in which a “random dude” hit him in the head with a hammer approximately a decade ago.
“So, 10 years ago, somebody got hit with a hammer. Today, somebody hit a table with a f–king hatchet,” he told the New York Post. “I think things are getting better, if you ask me.”
Police dealt with Palacios again on Oct. 9, after they allegedly witnessed him spray-painting graffiti behind 69 Second Avenue in Brooklyn at approximately 5:40 p.m., the New York Post reported.
Officers said that as they attempted to speak with him, Palacios took off running, snatched a $3,500 bike parked outside a coffee shop, and tried to ride away.
Police were able to apprehend him, but the bicycle was damaged in the chase, the New York Post reported.
Sources told the paper Palacios had graffiti paraphernalia on him at the time of his arrest.
He was charged with two counts of criminal mischief, grand larceny, making graffiti, possession of stolen property, and possession of graffiti instruments, the New York Post reported.
Investigators said they also linked Palacios to another crime involving a graffiti incident that took place in June and charged him with additional offenses of possession of graffiti instruments, and making graffiti.
The Broad Channel subway station in Queens was vandalized in that case, according to the New York Post.
Palacios was again released without bail on Oct. 10, just one day after his latest arrest.
Watch the incident unfold in the video below. Warning – Graphic Content and Obscene Language:
Just another day in Kathy Hochul’s New York. After we fire Hochul on November 8th, we are taking back our streets!pic.twitter.com/QgUYEvdJMm
— Lee Zeldin (@leezeldin) September 17, 2022
