‘You Don’t Arrest Someone for a Burger’: Entitled White Woman Tries to Skip Out on $34 Restaurant Tab, But Black Cop Gets the Last Word
She’s a dash confused.
Footage of a failed dine-and-dash from 2024 recently resurfaced, and the alleged hamburger thief is becoming internet famous all over again.
It’s a well-known scam: charging food to a ghost hotel room. But one white woman’s attempt to skip out on the tab at a Hyatt Regency inside the Dallas Fort Worth Airport Terminal made viewers’ jaws drop.
Looking like a regular “Karen” in a nondescript T-shirt and backpack, the woman apparently had lavish tastes. She had gobbled down a $34 burger and wanted to pay later.
Dubbed “The Hamburglar” on Atlanta Black Star’s Instagram, she was eventually handcuffed and arrested, but not before a bizarre back-and-forth with a Black police officer.
In police bodycam footage, the officer tried to warn her: “You’re going to pay the bill or you’re going to be arrested.”
“For what?” the woman shot back. “You don’t arrest someone for a burger. You give them a bill, and you give them a timeframe to pay a bill.”
The officer was surely trying not to roll her eyes as she explained the fundamentals of point-of-sale: you eat, then you pay. But the woman was adamant: “You do not arrest someone for a $34 hamburger. You do not arrest them for that!”
The officer repeated, “Ma’am, you will be arrested for that hamburger.”
After some scuffling, including demanding a receipt and smacking the cop’s hand away, police handcuffed the burger suspect and escorted her out.
Social media users had a field day in the comments section, with the jokes practically writing themselves.
One Atlanta Black Star reader said, “She tried to play like Wimpy from Popeye! ‘I’ll gladly pay you, Tuesday for a hamburger today.’”
Another wrote, “So basically she asked for an extension to pay for her burger.” Many wondered, “Who told her that’s how it works at restaurants?”
Several commenters were truly appalled by the entitlement on display. Some pointed to recent incidents in which Black people have faced deadly police responses over far less.
One cited the tragic case of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, who died on June 14 after police officers opened fire on a car of suspected shoplifters. The shooting happened in the parking lot of a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi.
A commenter wrote, “You going to jail over a hamburger because we getting shot over diapers.”
Two years later, the Hamburglar’s fate remains a mystery. By now the burger’s long forgotten, but the internet’s appetite for this clip will likely never go away.