COON RAPIDS - The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling for hate-crime charges against a woman accused of hitting another woman with a beer mug because she was speaking a language other than English at a Coon Rapids Applebee’s.
Jodie Marie Burchard-Risch, 43, of Ramsey was charged with third-degree assault Monday in Anoka County District Court.
Burchard-Risch and her husband were at the restaurant Oct. 30 when they got upset over hearing someone speaking a foreign language in the next booth, according to the criminal complaint. Restaurant managers tried to get Burchard-Risch to leave, but she refused and instead yelled and threw her drink at the woman speaking the foreign tongue.
“Defendant then smashed her beer mug across (the woman’s) face in a ‘round house punch’ motion and fled,” an investigator wrote in the complaint.
One of the restaurant managers followed Burchard-Risch until she was arrested by Coon Rapids police.
