A grandfather who was trying to buy McDonald’s Happy Meals for his two grandchildren was fatally shot inside the fast food restaurant.
Jorge Arbaiza, 61, entered a McDonald’s in Katy, Texas, on Sunday to order kids’ meals before dropping them off back home.
‘Unfortunately, he was caught in the crossfire of a dispute between two groups of people and was struck multiple times by gunfire,’ states a GoFundMe page for his funeral expenses.
The children were waiting in the car with their grandma, Teresa Arbaiza, when she saw a man with a gun in the rearview mirror and moments later heard gunshots, KHOU reported.
Teresa saw customers running out of the restaurant, but not her husband of 39 years.
She called him and found out he had been shot five times.
‘I’m dying, I’m going to die,’ were Jorge’s final words to her.
Teresa told the TV station in Spanish: ‘I couldn’t leave the kids alone – I could not go inside – the kids were crying, and they were scared.’
Jorge was airlifted to Memorial Hermann hospital, where he died of his injuries.
His wife said ‘he was crazy for his grandkids’.
Jorge’s loved ones remember him as an ‘exceptional husband, father, brother, and grandfather’.
‘Our family has been devastated and changed forever,’ states the GoFundMe page.
‘There are no words that can do our father justice, and anyone that had the pleasure of meeting him understands why.
‘He was larger than life, devoted everything to his family, and always made sure that his loved ones had everything they needed.’
At the time, the McDonald’s on Fry Road by Little York Road was full of customers including a few children.
Two groups of young people got into an altercation that ended with the shootout, according to Harris County Sheriff’s Office investigators.
Investigators said that one group of young men and women fired shots at a maroon SUV, and that the other group was inside a white sedan. Cops have apprehended one of the vehicles with suspects in the fight, but the shooters remain at large.
‘All I want is justice, so they can grab them and they can pay for what they did,’ Jorge’s sister-in-law, Zoila Garcia, told KHOU.
‘It’s so unjust.’
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A 25-year-old man who was part of the brawl was also shot but expected to recover, stated the sheriff’s office.
Anyone with information on the shooting is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
The GoFundMe page had raised more than $8,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
It happened nearly two years after a man shot dead his mother, his grandmother, a McDonald’s manager and then himself in Georgia.
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