SEATTLE — A garbage can was thrown and one man was arrested early Monday on Capitol Hill following a dispute over a pizza restaurant’s allegedly meager side servings of sriracha sauce.
Police responded to the 1000 block of East Union Street just after 2:15 AM after a woman called 911 and complained that employees at a pizza shop were yelling at her and calling her names.
Officers quickly spotted what they initially believed were three intoxicated friends rough-housing on the corner of the block, but soon noticed a 29-year-old man preparing to make a break for it.
A 36-year-old woman at the scene told officers she and a 45-year-old man had been at the pizza restaurant and had left following a dispute with staff. She said that when she and her friend left the restaurant, they were accosted by the 29-year-old man, who threw a garbage can, striking the 45-year-old in the leg. It’s unclear how the 29-year-old man came to enter the strange scene.
Restaurant staff asked officers to remove the 36-year-old woman as she had reportedly created a “disturbance inside when she did not receive what she believed to be an adequate amount of Sriracha sauce.” The woman, officers wrote in their report, “kept bringing up” the sriracha issue as officers were attempting to investigate the incident. She also “attempted to divert [the] investigation from the assault to her irritation with the pizza parlor and her treatment” by an employee “with the tattoos on the face.”
Officers arrested the 29-year-old man for assault and took him to the East Precinct for processing. He was later released.
Jonah Spangenthal-Lee / SPD
