St. Paul police reports paint a tense and profanity-filled incident involving Mayor Carter’s staff at a restaurant

Alcohol and an argument at the Tori Ramen Restaurant in St. Paul — It all unfolded around midnight on St. Patrick’s Day.

“They just came in, they were obviously intoxicated,” recalls restaurant owner Jason Dorweiler.

He says a group of seven people came in asking for a table, while three men went to the restroom.

“They were very loud, we heard noises from inside the bathroom, outside while service was going on,” Dorweiler explains. “We kind of checked in on them. It appeared that they had urinated all over our floor, which is a bad sign, in addition to them coming in and just being annoying. They proceeded to sit down and were just being belligerent the whole time.”

Police records list two in the group as Krystle Cruz Williams, the Director of Business Management in Mayor Melvin Carter’s office, and Kamal Baker, the mayor’s press secretary.

Dorweiler says he and restaurant manager John Keenan told the group they had to leave — Keenan saying he warned them he had pepper spray.

Shortly after that, they say things escalated.

“They were throwing punches at my staff, so we had to kick them out, eventually filed a police report,” Dorweiler says. “We ended up having to pepper spray them, for anything to work. They just weren’t listening.”

A second police report, filed days later, shows Cruz Williams called police, saying she wanted to report an assault.

In the report she says ‘she was trying to de-escalate the situation’ — and that she told the manager she and her friends were going to leave.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS went to City Hall, attempting to ask the mayor about the situation.

He wasn’t there, so we reached out to his Chief of Staff, Peter Leggett.

Leggett released a statement, disputing the restaurant’s version of events, saying in part:

“While I am obviously limited in what information I can offer regarding activities of city workers in their personal/non-official lives, I was informed by two City workers that they filed a police report last week relative to this incident, that will likely contradict the description of events included in your email.”  

The report Leggett mentioned is the one filed by Cruz Williams, obtained by 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

She says both she and Baker were pepper sprayed in the face.

But police records show no one needed medical attention.

It’s unknown what will happen next, but one of the two police reports mentions insufficient evidence. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reached out to Baker for comment, but we have not heard back.