She Panned Diner's Treatment of Disabled. Next Came 3 Shots

Friend of diner owner accused in Aug. 20 drive-by shooting
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 4, 2018 8:34 AM CDT
Updated Sep 8, 2018 8:31 AM CDT
She Panned Diner's Treatment of Disabled. Next Came 3 Shots
Norman Auvil   (Orange County Jail)

"I didn't think anybody was crazy enough to do something like this." So says Florida's Monica Walley, who was at her Orange County home Aug. 20 when a bullet whizzed through a window, missing her father's head by inches. It was one of three fired at the home in retaliation for a critical restaurant review, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Walley had penned the review on Facebook, explaining her disabled mother was denied service at the Daybreak Diner where she had once suffered a fall. "It was my mother's birthday, and all she wanted was her favorite Greek omelet," Walley wrote. Told she couldn't be in the restaurant without a companion, "she arrived back home in tears," Walley added in the review, which prompted hundreds of negative comments and some angry phone calls to the diner, per Fox 35.

The restaurant said employees "have never and will never practice any form of discrimination." But the review was still a talking point that night as the son of the diner's owner drank beer with his roommate and a family friend, 42-year-old Norman Auvil. After finding Walley's address online, they discussed driving there to pick a fight or slash tires, police say, per WESH. Once outside the home, however, Auvil allegedly fired three shots. "I actually could feel the air from the bullet as it passed by me," Walley's father tells WJAX. "It missed me by about 4 inches." Arrested Thursday, per the Orlando Sentinel, Auvil was charged with shooting into a building, shooting from a vehicle and abuse of a disabled person after his two companions "expressed concern for their safety" and described other "violent outbursts by Auvil," per a criminal complaint. (More drive-by shooting stories.)

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