The incident was filmed from inside the Lower East Side McDonald’s by an Uber Eats driver and shows the 31-year-old trying to talk to a woman inside the location at around 2:30 a.m.

It later shows Palacios angrily talking to three men. After he pushed past them, the interaction became physical.

The three men began punching Palacios. For a short while, he defended himself, but later stopped. The men, however, did not.

Later, an onlooker told the men to stop punching Palacios, and he managed to calmly separate himself.

That’s when Palacios pulled out his ax. He hit a table and glass partition near the men as they backed away from him.

 

The Uber Eats driver said the ax-wielder first popped off after the woman he was speaking to rejected him, according to the New York Post. But Palacios said what catalyzed the altercation was a security guard refusing to let him use the bathroom. He also said that he only meant to “scare” the men and defend himself.

“I’m like, ‘Yo, bro, c’mon. Open the bathroom,’” he said, according to the Post. “And then I hear, ‘You, you don’t have to be mean about it.’ I’m like, ‘Shut the f**k up.’ I didn’t even look back. I just said it, and then it all became, ‘Oh, I’ll slap you.’ I’m like, ‘Where are you gonna slap me?’ And that’s when I came at the guy with the black tank top.”

Palacios said he then “got tired” of the three men “backing” him up. And he just “slapped one of them.” He also made it clear that the altercation “had nothing to do with attacking women.”

“The woman had no issues. I had no issues with the woman,” he explained.

He also noted that he remained calm while the men were punching him.

“I showed composure. People just see blankness, but I was thinking,” the 31-year-old said. “I was processing. You ever download a program and the Apple sign spins? That was me processing.”

He later added that he’s “not unhinged” and feels he doesn’t deserve to go to jail for the incident.

“Everybody’s talking about how I should be in jail,” he said. “I did my 18 hours, bro. What else do you want? Why do I have to be in jail? I’m not going to make it a race thing just because I’m big and Black.”

According to Palacios, New York City has been riddled with violence for decades, and what went down at McDonald’s is a marker that things are improving.

“It’s New York City,” he told the Post. “I’ve been here for a long time, and there’s always been crime. I got hit in the head with a hammer at that corner like 10 years ago while I was walking to the store. Some random dude. So, 10 years ago somebody got hit with a hammer. Today, somebody hit a table with a f**king hatchet. I think things are getting better if you ask me.”

Palacios was arraigned on charges of criminal mischief and weapons possession hours after the incident. He has been released without bail.