Jack in the Box ex-employee accused of shooting at family in drive-thru responds to lawsuit

HOUSTON (KTRK) - A former Jack in the Box employee who admits she aimed a gun at a customer is telling her side of the story.

Warning: Video contains profanity and a slur that have been bleeped.

Surveillance video appears to show Alonniea Ford-Theriot shooting out of the drive-thru window after a dispute over curly fries in March 2021. The customers, Anthony Ramos and his family, and their attorney on Tuesday detailed the incident and the shooting that followed.

“She’s aiming. She’s leaning. She’s not just going up in the air. She’s trying to kill them,” said attorney Randall Kallinen at a news conference.

“It was pointed right at me. I’m surprised she didn’t get me,” Ramos said.

Ford-Theriot contacted KTRK to respond.

“I want to clear my name and tell my story. That’s not the whole story that they’re telling,” she said Tuesday.

She says she worked for Jack in the Box for 15 years, most recently at the location on John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Houston, where she says the job was dangerous.

Ramos said he and his wife ordered a meal combo but didn’t get the curly fries.

“She said we weren’t going to get them, and that was it,” he said.

The confrontation escalated to food throwing and, Ford-Theriot said, racial slurs, which Ramos denies.

She said she asked Ramos to leave. The video captured the gunfire, but Ford-Theriot claimed she did not shoot the gun.

“If you hear the audio, you didn’t hear the gun go off at all,” she said.

There is no audio on the video that was released, but according to court records, Houston police found a spent shell casing.

Ford-Theriot was initially charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of deadly conduct and got one-year deferred adjudication, which she completed in June.

She and the restaurant still face the civil lawsuit.

Ramos said they were exposed to a dangerous employee and were traumatized.

“I served my sentence. I paid my fees. I did what I had to do. What else do you want from me?” Ford-Theriot said. “I can’t give you nothing but an apology if you want that, but I need the same thing. We both need to apologize to each other.”