Former Edmond restaurant employee accused of threatening to blow it up
EDMOND, Okla. (KFOR) — A former employee of an Edmond restaurant is facing criminal charges, accused of threatening employees and the restaurant itself.
The allegations surround Joshua Schroth, who employees at Othello's in Edmond confirmed to News 4 had only worked at the restaurant for a few weeks before his employment abruptly ended.
"We had an employee who literally only worked for us for two weeks in the middle of a Friday night shift, he just disappeared," said a current employee. "We were all looking for him. We figured he just walked out."
That employee told News 4 that about a week later, Schroth showed up asking for his paycheck. Othello's tried to direct deposit it to an account listed on Schroth's application but were unsuccessful. The employee says Othello's then tried mailing the check to an address listed on filed for Schroth but it came back.
The employee said the check was not with her when Schroth allegedly showed up November 20 demanding that it be turned over.
"He started getting a little more loud, so I finally asked him if he would just leave," said the employee. "He told me no. I said, I'm going to ask you one more time nicely to leave or I'm calling the cops."
The employee says she did call the cops. News 4 requested those recordings from the Edmond Police Department. In the over nine minute clip, you can hear the employee make note of several threats she says Schroth made including threatening another employee, threatening to blow up the building and making perceived intimidation threats about the restaurant's closing hours.
The employee said Schroth called the restaurant dozens of times the same evening, at one point noting in a 911 call he had called the restaurant 23 times in just eight minutes.
Body camera video of Schroth's arrest shows him inside of the restaurant when an Edmond officer tells him to turn around and face a wall. During the clip, Schroth insists that he only came to the restaurant for his paycheck.
"That doesn't mean you get to call up here hundreds of times and then threaten to blow the place up," an officer says in the video.
Schroth says in the same video clip that those words never came out of his mouth, and a police report says that he was adamant that he hadn't threatened to blow up the restaurant.
The employee News 4 spoke with says that regardless of if he had the means or actually ever attempted to carry out any of the threats he's accused of making, the situation should have been handled differently.
"It's a $300 maybe $400 paycheck, you know, and now, you know, now he's been sitting in jail," said the employee. "This is a family-owned business. You know, he should have been a little more patient with us."
Schroth facing a felony charge of threatening to kill/injure/intimidate any person or cause property damage with an explosive. He's being held in the Oklahoma County Jail on a $5,000 bond.