Twisted Tea Incident Registry
Registry · Satire, mostly sourced
The Twisted Tea Incident Registry
Every documented case in the United States in which a can of Twisted Tea was used as an improvised weapon, tracked since the format was invented at a Circle K in Elyria, Ohio, on Christmas Eve 2020.
Charts
Confirmed incidents
| Case ID | TTA-2020-001 |
|---|---|
| Date | December 24, 2020 |
| Location | Circle K, Elyria, Ohio |
| Weapon | 24 oz can, swung one-handed at the head |
| Context | An unmasked man at the checkout counter directed racial slurs and taunts at another customer, later identified as Barry Allen, and goaded him to fight. |
| Sequence | Allen, who appeared to want only to pay for his tallboy and leave, struck the man with the can and continued the altercation on the ground. |
| Charges | None filed, per local reporting |
| Outcome | Video passed 5 million views on YouTube alone within weeks and became the namesake meme ("Tea-KO"). This is the registry's index case. |
| Sources | Wikipedia · Fingers · VinePair |
| Case ID | TTA-2020-002 |
|---|---|
| Date | January 18, 2020 |
| Location | Merrimack, New Hampshire |
| Weapon | 24 oz can, struck to the face |
| Context | A domestic dispute; the victim reported the incident to an officer stationed nearby. |
| Charges | Simple assault and domestic violence |
| Outcome | Facial bruising reported. Suspect surrendered after a warrant was issued. |
| Sources | WHDH |
| Case ID | TTA-2021-003 provisional |
|---|---|
| Date | January 19, 2021 |
| Location | Peachland Promenade, Port Charlotte, Charlotte County, Florida |
| Weapon | Can, carried in hand; a 28-inch steel pipe was also carried |
| Context | The suspect, Shane Gillis, made threatening phone calls to a former employer before arriving at the scene, telling him I’m coming for you straight through the parking lot. |
| Charges | Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, without intent to kill |
| Why provisional | Reporting does not specify which item the charge treats as the deadly weapon. The pipe is the likelier candidate; the can rides along on reputation. The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office itself joked on Facebook that it couldn't say whether the tea prompted the confrontation or was simply the weapon of choice. |
| Sources | Gulf Coast News Now · AOL/WINK News |
Excluded cases
Searching "Twisted Tea" and "assault" mostly returns theft reports, unrelated hot-tea incidents, and a genuinely large number of convenience-store robberies. Each near miss is logged with the reason it failed, because a registry that only shows what it counted hides the interesting part.
| Date | Location | What happened | Why excluded | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 22, 2023 | Bakersfield, CA | Two suspects stole Twisted Tea from a market and punched the manager when confronted; both convicted of robbery. | The can was the stolen property, not the weapon. The manager was struck with a fist. | KGET |
| Undated | Logan, Philadelphia, PA | A man threw a cup of hot tea in a restaurant employee's face, causing second- and third-degree burns. | Brand not identified as Twisted Tea, and the liquid was thrown rather than the can swung. | 6abc |
| Undated | Feasterville, PA | Two women loaded a shopping cart with Twisted Tea and fled an Acme without paying. | No altercation occurred. Theft only; registry tracks assaults. | CBS Philly |
The index case
Every entry in this registry exists downstream of one video. On December 24, 2020, footage from a Circle K in Elyria, Ohio, showed a man hurling racial slurs at another customer until the customer, Barry Allen, hit him with a tallboy of Twisted Tea. No charges were filed. The video became one of the most-shared clips of that December, and "using a Twisted Tea can as a weapon" became internet shorthand for justified retaliation long before anyone had reason to check whether it kept happening.
It has happened at least twice more since, for reasons that have nothing to do with racism or memes: a domestic dispute and a workplace confrontation. Whether that is a real pattern or just three unrelated news stories that happen to share a beverage brand is exactly the kind of question a registry with n = 3 cannot answer, which is the point.
Methodology
- Inclusion criteria
- A can of Twisted Tea, opened or unopened, used as a striking implement against a person during an altercation. The can must do the hitting. Being present, being stolen, or merely being consumed beforehand does not qualify.
- Data sources
- Local news reporting and, where available, court records. No agency tracks beverage-based improvised weapons, so this is assembled by hand from television and newspaper archives, the same way the donkey one was.
- Search protocol
- Queries combining "Twisted Tea" with "assault," "hit," "struck," "weapon," and "charged," across all available years. The protocol returned a great many theft reports, one unrelated hot-tea burn case, and the original viral video roughly as often as it returned anything new.
- Coding
- Cases are marked confirmed when a named location, a specific date, and a described strike are all present in reporting. Cases missing one of those are marked provisional.
- Limitations
- The sample is small enough that any trend line is decorative. A 2020 cluster reflects two unrelated incidents six years ago, not a wave. Absence of a state from this list means no reported case was found, not that none occurred.
Download the data
Confirmed and provisional cases, plus the excluded log, in open formats.