“This will be hard to cope with”: Restaurant employees remember the night of the mass murder in Birmingham

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – Businesses in Five Points South, some of which were open Saturday night, report how the Mass shooting concerns them.

WBRC visited 10 stores in the area, where some employees said they had noticed a decline in customer traffic since the shooting, while others were still busy.

T-Bone’s Authentic Philly Style Cheesesteaks And Hoagies just closed when someone started shooting around the corner on Saturday night.

Gunshots and police sirens rang out in the neighborhood.

“It’s going to be hard to take,” said Donita Young, a manager at the restaurant. “It’s something that sticks in your mind.”

Four people were killed and 17 others injured in a mass shooting that occurred just a two-minute walk away.

“You’ve taken someone’s mother, child, son or brother, and they’re never coming back,” Young said.

Employees who worked that night said they were just about to close when they heard the shots.

“We come outside and see girls being shot,” Mary Dumas said. “Someone was shot down there. There was a huge noise. People were running. It was just crazy.”

Although she was at home, Donita Young’s 23-year-old daughter was working at T-Bone’s at the time.

“So I just picked up the phone and tried to call my daughter to make sure – it reminded me of other things that were happening in the news and how people feel when they can’t reach their children,” she said. “I was just so worried. It was scary. It was like one of the most horrible days of my life.”

The night took Dumas back eight years to the day she was shot.

“2016 – me and my little daughter were shot,” Dumas said. “I was shot twice. My baby was shot. She was four years old when she was shot. It’s like the same thing is happening again. There are no names on the bullets. You could die. My daughter is traumatized. I can’t even walk properly anymore. I can’t run anymore. They don’t think about how much they’re hurting the families.”

Both women said the violence in Birmingham was out of control.

“Stop killing each other!” Dumas said. “This doesn’t make sense. Black lives should matter, but we don’t care about each other and that makes me very, very sad.”

“It’s Monday night, so nothing’s happening, but what about next weekend?” Yougn asked. “And the weekend after that? We never thought about that before. But now it’s on your mind. You’re changed, because now I’m constantly worried. I don’t want to take out the trash.”

Although employees said T-Bones has not seen a decline in customer numbers since the shooting, they noted there have been more online orders than in-person orders.

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