Cleveland business owner on her cupcake store being ransacked by rioters
Colossal Cupcakes owner Kelly Kandah speaks out.
An Ohio business owner told “Fox & Friends First” on Tuesday that her cupcake store was ransacked while she and four employees were hiding inside.
Kelly Kandah, the owner of Colossal Cupcakes in Cleveland, said she and four employees locked themselves in the bathroom of the store as looters showed up and destroyed everything, as protests over the death of George Floyd have grown out of control.
“I had this for almost 10 years, my family built it up, [I] listened to it get absolutely destroyed,” Kandah said on Tuesday. “That whole time we were locked in there … I just listened to everything getting shattered and crushed.”
“It was devastating,” she added.
Protests were sparked by the May 25 death of Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis cop, Derek Chauvin, was seen kneeling on his neck in a viral video. Chauvin has been fired and charged with third-degree murder, and the federal Justice Department has been investigating the case. Crowds across the nation have seized on the racially charged incident to demand justice, but the protests have devolved into riots in many cities, culminating in days of carnage.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has activated the Ohio National Guard to assist in dealing with the violent demonstrations.
“These violent individuals threaten the safety of our citizens of the community. Acts of violence cannot and will not be tolerated,” DeWine said on Saturday.
“Saturday we had some very peaceful protesting going on in the morning in Cleveland, on the other side of the city, downtown Cleveland, I had word that later in the evening things started to sort of heat up and riots were breaking out,” Kandah said.
CONCERNS ABOUT NEW WAVE OF CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAKS AFTER PROTESTS
She said she lives next to her store, so she ran over there.
“I could barely even get there in time, riots were already breaking out,” Kandah said.
“I heard glass breaking. I heard it coming. Before I knew it there was a gunshot and it blew out the entire window to my right. At that point I had most of the staff just pretty much run and hide in the bathroom,” she continued.
Kandah said she thought that the rioters “must not know we are in here so if they just see me they’ll ease up.”
“I was just really hoping that if they saw me there my presence would calm them down and so when they started coming through I said, ‘Hey you know we’re in here, I am in here,’ and one charged at me and then I had a brick thrown and a paint can thrown and that’s when someone jumped on the counter and then started to leap towards me so I ran into the back bathroom and locked myself in with the four staff that I had with me there and we stayed on the phone with [police],” she described.
When asked what she was thinking at the time Kandah said, “I was frozen… I just was blown away.”
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Kandah said President Trump’s announcement on Monday that the federal government will help business owners targeted by rioters was comforting, but added, “I wish that we weren’t at this point in the first place.”
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