DEARBORN — Four Arab American teens who dined and dashed at a Dearborn restaurant turned themselves in after police used social media to find them.
On Sunday the teens ate at the Red Sea Restaurant on Michigan Avenue, then ran out without paying.
“They got lobster tails, snow crab, shrimp, there were four,” Red Sea owner Suhail Mohammed told Fox 2 News. “They had a good amount of food.”
But when they finished eating, no one at the table stayed around to pay the bill — which was about $400.
“They ran out so all of us we ran towards them, but they were already in the car. I couldn’t get to them,” said Liv, a server.
Dearborn police were called and arrived at the scene to investigate.
But Liv decided that in addition to a police investigation, something else might help locate the teens and their parents.
The restaurant gave the police its surveillance video of the teens dining and dashing so it could be posted on the city’s Instagram site.
“Honestly if we had not done that we would have never found them,” Liv said.
“Actually, in what I would say, 30 minutes the parents of the kids contacted the restaurant,” Mohammed said. “They came here, apologized and they paid.
“They actually brought the kids and they made them apologize.”
Despite the bill being nearly $400, Mohammed decided to give them a discount, knocking off half the price.
“They’re kids at the end and I looked at it like they’re my kids doing that stuff,” he said. “Me giving them that for 50 percent off on the bill was just because they came back and stood up for the mistake that they did.”
Moving forward this young entrepreneur hopes social media will be used to attract paying customers and not dine and dashers.
“Hopefully nothing happens again in here or other places cause it was really a bad situation for the place, and for the server,” he said.
– Fox 2 Detroit. Edited for style.
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