Investigators are reviewing security video from a McDonald’s restaurant in Woburn after a Kamala Harris supporter reported that a group of men surrounded her car while making homophobic comments and shouting “Trump 2024.”
Keri Rodrigues said she bought food at the McDonald’s drive-through on Montvale Avenue Sunday night and then stopped in the parking lot for a few minutes. Suddenly, she noticed that a group of young people had surrounded her car.
“I was in my own little world. I really wasn’t thinking about anything,” Rodrigues, a long-time Democratic activist, said in an interview Wednesday. “I look and I see all of the kids. I’m like ‘what are they doing? What is happening?’ I was very shocked.”
Rodrigues, the founder of the National Parents Union, said she had a small Kamala Harris sticker in the back window of her SUV she got at the Democratic National Convention in August. She said she has a short, pixie-style haircut.
“I heard them yelling and yelling and I was trying to make out what they were saying,” she said. “And I rolled down the passenger-side window, and I heard them saying, ‘She’s got a [expletive] lesbian haircut. She’s a [expletive] lesbian. She’s a [expletive] Kamala supporter.’ And then they started yelling, ‘Trump 2024.′ It happened very quickly.”
Rodrigues contacted police, who interviewed her at her home later that night, she said.
Woburn Police Chief Robert F. Rufo Jr. said Wednesday that detectives have obtained video from the restaurant and are trying to determine whether a crime took place.
“We are exercising a tremendous degree of caution on both sides,” he said. “It’s very sensitive.”
Rodrigues said she was contacted by the victim witness advocate for Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office. Prosecutors said Wednesday that the investigation is ongoing.
Rodrigues estimated that the men who surrounded her car were between 18 and 22 years old. She said they prevented her from driving away when she started the car.
At that point, Rodrigues, the mother of five boys, decided to get out of the car and confront them.
“I immediately just clicked into that mom mode,” she said. She was determined to tell them that “we are not doing this, this is not OK. The adrenaline kicked in.”
She said she grabbed her cellphone to take a photo but fumbled with it. At that point, the men jumped into a blue pickup truck, she said.
“They’re still yelling ‘Trump 2024′ and ‘you [expletive] lesbian,’ so I’m trying to get my cellphone out, but they hop in the car, they kind of blow past me and they end up going out of the entrance.”
Rufo said he did not know when the investigation would be completed. “It takes time,” he said.
Rodriques said she believes police should talk to the men to let them know what they did was unacceptable.
“These are just kids who are idiots who need to have the police come and maybe sit down and be like, ‘You can’t do this. This is not OK,” she said.
“And I don’t want anybody who is a lesbian, who is gay, who is a part of any other marginalized community to have to suffer that,” she added. “I don’t know what the right answer is. but there’s got to be serious consequences for doing this against somebody who you think is part of those communities.”
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.