LINCOLN PARK — Two men were arrested Monday after confronting a 32-year-old resident in the street over money he allegedly owed to his girlfriend.
The couple had been traveling north on Fort Street near Gregory when they got into an argument over $100 she said he owed her for a telephone bill. The argument escalated and he demanded to be let out of the car.
He walked south on the sidewalk east of Fort and she then parked her car on Liberty because she wanted to get the money from him, police said. She got out of her car and confronted him, and the two then argued loudly before the man stopped talking and ran through a parking lot between two businesses, where a 1994 Lexus pulled up alongside him.
The driver, an 18-year-old Dearborn Heights man, and an 18-year-old Grosse Pointe man said they overheard the couple arguing and thought the resident had taken his girlfriend’s cell phone. They directed him to give it back to her, and the driver got out and confronted the man.
Before doing so, the man said, the driver grabbed a black and silver handgun from the center console of the car and held it in his right hand as they talked. The man told the driver he hadn’t taken his girlfriend’s phone, at which point she walked up to the confrontation.
The driver asked what the resident took from her, and she told him he owed her money that he wasn’t giving to her. The driver then gave the resident three seconds to give her the money back, still holding the gun at his side.
The resident feared the Lexus’s occupants would jump him, so he walked into the lobby of Mickey’s Pizza, 3511 Fort St., where the two then entered and continued the confrontation. When an employee told them to take it outside, the resident called 911 and the men got back in the Lexus and headed north.
The resident was visibly shaken when police found him. Officers stopped the Lexus a few blocks away.
The Dearborn Heights man was arrested for felonious assault; the Grosse Pointe man was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle. The car was impounded.
— Tom Tigani