AUGUSTA, GEORGIA — At approximately 2:00 AM on Saturday, a man smashed the glass entrance door of Maryland Fried Chicken at 1400 Broad Street in downtown Augusta, walked inside, and began eating.
He did not go to the register. He did not go to the office. The previous day’s cash receipts were sitting on top of the safe in the office, visible, accessible, and untouched. The man walked past the money. The man went to the kitchen. The man took two containers of coleslaw and two containers of potato salad. The man remained inside the restaurant for approximately three hours.
Three hours. From approximately 2 AM to approximately 5 AM. In a closed restaurant. Eating sides. Alone.
Surveillance footage shows the man — identified by investigators as Tyreze Dantignac, 31 — walking between the kitchen and the cash registers during his three-hour stay. Owner Charlotte Hill confirmed that he helped himself to the side dishes. He did not touch the cash. He did not attempt to open the safe. He did not take the chicken. He took coleslaw and potato salad. He ate coleslaw and potato salad. For three hours. And then he left.
Brent has confirmed all of this. Brent is now going to tell two stories about it, because there are two stories, and the internet has only told one of them.
The Funny Story
The funny story is: a man broke into a restaurant, ignored the money, and ate sides for three hours. The headline is “SLAW AND ORDER: AUGUSTA EDITION.” The restaurant posted on Facebook the next morning — after boarding up the broken door with plywood — a message that read: “Got the wood in place! We are open for business! Can I interest you in some of our delicious potato salad and coleslaw? It’s worth catching a felony for!”
The post is funny. The restaurant leaned into it. The internet shared it. The story circulated as comedy — a man chose sides over cash, chose coleslaw over crime, chose potato salad over profit. The implication is: the sides at Maryland Fried Chicken are so good that a man committed a felony to eat them, and the felony was not even for the chicken, it was for the accompaniments, and the accompaniments were worth three hours of his time and a burglary charge and the shattering of a glass door.
Brent understands the funny story. Brent has told funny stories before. Brent has told the story of 47 hot dogs taped to a man’s body. Brent has told the story of a robot chasing boars. Brent has told the story of a roadkill deer in a restaurant freezer. Each of those stories was funny on the surface and Brent told the surface and the surface was sufficient.
This story has a surface and it has something underneath the surface, and Brent is going to tell the underneath part now.
The Other Story
Tyreze Dantignac is 31 years old. He has been arrested five times in the last fifteen years. He has received probation every single time. Not once in five arrests over fifteen years has the system produced an outcome other than probation. Not once has the system intervened in a way that changed the trajectory. The trajectory continued. The trajectory brought him to a fried chicken restaurant at 2 AM on a Saturday, where he broke a door and ate coleslaw for three hours and did not take the money.
In a previous incident, Dantignac exposed himself to a woman in a Walmart parking lot. When deputies responded, he brandished a knife. During the encounter with officers, he asked them to shoot him. He asked the police to shoot him. That sentence is in the record. That sentence is not in the meme. That sentence is the sentence that changes the story from comedy to something else.
In 2022, he was accused of setting a fire outside an apartment door at Bon Air Apartments. He told officers he started the fire to lure a resident out so he could retrieve his cell phone. The occupants extinguished the flames themselves and called authorities.
Last summer, he was photographed and posted to an Augusta University website after receiving a trespass warning.
Five arrests. Fifteen years. Probation every time. A man who has asked police to shoot him, who has set fires, who has exposed himself in parking lots, who has brandished weapons at officers, and who — on the most recent occasion — broke into a restaurant, ignored the money, and sat in the dark eating sides for three hours.
Brent is not a social worker. Brent is not a psychologist. Brent is a field reporter. But Brent has been in enough rooms to know that a man who breaks into a restaurant at 2 AM and spends three hours eating coleslaw instead of taking the cash that is sitting on top of a safe ten feet away is not a man executing a plan. That is a man who is hungry. That is a man who broke a door because he was hungry and the door was between him and the food. The cash was not the point. The sides were the point. The sides were the only thing he took. The sides were the only thing he wanted.
A man who asks police to shoot him and then, years later, breaks into a restaurant to eat alone in the dark for three hours is a man who has been falling for a long time, and the system that was supposed to catch him gave him probation five times and caught him zero times, and now the system has given him a sixth arrest and the internet has given him a headline about coleslaw.
Both Stories Are True
The restaurant’s Facebook post is funny. The headline is funny. The image of a man choosing potato salad over a safe full of cash is, on its surface, absurd in the specific way that Brent covers — the gap between what a person did and what a reasonable person would do. The gap here is a side dish. The gap is usually the story.
But the gap here is also fifteen years and five arrests and probation every time and a man asking police to shoot him and a fire at an apartment and a trespass warning at a university and then, finally, a broken door and three hours alone in a dark restaurant eating coleslaw and potato salad at 2 AM on a Saturday in Augusta, Georgia.
The restaurant is open. The door has been repaired. The sides are still available. The post has been shared. The man is in custody. The man has been in custody before. The man has been released before. The man has been given probation before. The man has been in this cycle before. The cycle is the story underneath the story, and the cycle is not funny, and the coleslaw is not the point, and the point is that a man was hungry enough to break a door and patient enough to eat for three hours and desperate enough to ignore the money and the system met him five times in fifteen years and the system’s answer was probation and probation did not feed him and the door did not stop him and the sides were there and the man ate them and the internet made a joke and the joke is funny and the man is in custody and both of those things are true.
Brent Eyewitness, Field Reporter, filed this piece on May 2, 2026, with a confidence level of 95% and one fake source, because the incident is documented by The Augusta Press. The surveillance footage, the identification of Tyreze Dantignac, the charges of burglary and theft, the three-hour timeline, the untouched cash, the coleslaw and potato salad, owner Charlotte Hill’s account, and the restaurant’s Facebook post are all from The Augusta Press. Dantignac’s criminal history — including the Walmart incident, the request for officers to shoot him, the Bon Air Apartments fire, and five arrests with probation in every case — is from The Augusta Press. The ‘SLAW AND ORDER’ headline is from the social media post that circulated the story. Brent told both stories because both stories happened. Gerald the houseplant reviewed this article. Gerald does not eat coleslaw. Gerald does not break doors. Gerald has never asked anyone to shoot him. Gerald is in his pot and Gerald is fine and Gerald has never been hungry enough to break something to get to food, and Gerald would like it noted that not everyone can say that, and that is the point.