Teenage girl held hostage during McDonald’s robbery calls 911 and gets her mom to dispatch

A teenage fast-food worker says she was attacked on her shift and locked in the restaurant’s freezer with her co-workers. When she called to report the crime, the dispatcher on the other end who helped save her life was the Louisiana native’s mother.

Tenia Hill, a 16-year-old clerk at a New Orleans McDonald’s on South Claiborne Avenue, recalled the day her job was stopped by a woman with a gun.

On Monday, Oct. 17, the woman wrestled all of the girl’s work colleagues and put them all in the back freezer while robbing the store, WSAZ reports.

The quick-thinking teen recalled she had her phone and called 911 from the freezer. To her surprise, the operator on the other end of the line was her mother, Teri Clark, who had worked as an assistant operations manager in the Orleans Parish Communications District for over two decades.

Clark says she should have left work already but decided to stay later to help her co-workers with other calls. It was fortunate that she was still there, taking her daughter’s call.

The mother told WDSU, “I was in shock.” Especially when she heard her child say, “Mom, please hurry up. She has a gun.”

Clark was concerned but couldn’t show it. She needed to keep a calm head and get the information she needed from her terrified child to accurately convey to the police.

“We’re hurrying, give me a description,” she said to her daughter.

“I broke down when my kid said, ‘We’re in the freezer.’ I said, ‘In the freezer?'” Clark said. “Tears were streaming down my face as I took the call. I’m still trying to do my job and I did the job to the best of my ability.”

After alerting the police, she made her way to her daughter’s place of work. She wanted to make sure her child was safe.

The daughter said she was glad everything ended the way it did for many reasons.

She was primarily concerned that it would traumatize her mother. She said: “I was very worried because I didn’t want my mother to have to bury her youngest child.”

The second is that it reinforces the security that all children believe their parents can provide.

“I could have lost my life, but she saved my life,” Hill said. “I was happy.”

She also said, “I was really scared because at my first job I never imagined that I would be robbed, let alone have a gun pointed at me.”

Clark was also glad that everything had turned out well.

Although she worked as an assistant operations manager for 24 years, Clark received a call from one of her family members. That the first was her daughter was a test of her professionalism.

Clark’s supervisor also applauded the woman for handling it.

“If I could clone Teri, I would,” said OPCD Executive Director Tyrell Morris. “I want to remind everyone that we have people under the headset who have feelings and emotions. We are committed to your safety 365 days a year, even if it is our own child. Our idle agent rate has decreased by 25 percent and for the first time in over a year we are seeing an increase in improvements in call-handling times to match national standard times compared to last year.”

“Teri Clark is a shining example of what our 911 heroes in New Orleans and across the country do every day,” Morris said in a statement to CNN.

Clark says the incident made the mother-daughter bond even stronger. Till mentally says her mother is even more of a superhero than ever.

“She is the GOAT. Greatest of all time, that’s the greatest dispatcher I know,” Hill said.

Till is also quite special. After such a traumatic day, she went back to work the next day.