A Southern California man has drawn praise for using a spatula to confront a stick-wielding woman who was reportedly threatening employees of an In-N-Out in Lake Elsinore.
The incident came to light after a bystander posted a video of the confrontation to Instagram. The bystander was waiting in line at the drive-through when she heard the driver in front of her yelling through the window, she said in the video.
“He gets out of his car, and he jumps through the window like he’s Spider-Man moves or, like, does this Jackie Chan move feet-first through the window,” she said in the video. “And he starts battling this lady with a stick, who she had chased, I guess, all the staff into some back room.”
“This kid, like, totally saved the day,” she added.
The man, Luca Opperman, 20, said in an interview that the incident happened around 1 a.m. Wednesday. He placed his order and drove to the second window to pick up his food when he heard “this super loud banging noise.”
“I look up and just see this lady, she has this baseball bat-sized stick, basically like a tree branch, and she’s overhead smashing it on top of a counter,” he said.
Opperman yelled at the woman to get out of the restaurant, but she instead opened the folding latch separating the lobby from the kitchen and started walking toward the employees who were in the back, he said.
He then jumped through the window and grabbed the first thing he saw: a spatula. “Thinking about it now, I probably would have been better off with a fryer basket, but it happened so fast,” he said.
He said the woman swung the stick at him as he wielded the spatula. At one point, she briefly turned away, prompting him to “go in with a shoulder check” and grab the stick from her, he said.
Police then came and arrested the woman, he said.
Opperman is a college student who also does freestyle trampolining and used to teach parkour and play rugby. He credited those skills with helping him jump through the window and disarm the woman quickly.
He also used to work in fast food, which is what drove him to intervene, he said.
“I know In-N-Out employees get paid decent, but they don’t get paid well enough to get attacked by a crazy lady with a stick,” he said. “It’s something where I’ve got to stand up for my fellow brothers, that type of feeling.”
The video of the confrontation has drawn over 64,000 likes, with many commenters praising Opperman as a small-town hero.
In-N-Out also commended the student’s actions. “We are thankful that one of our customers bravely intervened to ensure the safety of everyone nearby,” chief operating officer Denny Warnick wrote in a statement. “We applaud his selflessness and quick thinking, and we’ve been able to share our gratitude with him.”
Still, Opperman remained humble. “Everything I’ve read has been positive, it’s all been like I did a good job, people asking me if I’ve taken karate or martial arts,” he said. “But I feel like what I did was more being in the right place at the right time.”
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