He had a gun and witnesses say he wanted them to know it

Three different incident reports from three different Myrtle Beach locations listed the same threat that put people on edge Saturday: The man had a gun and he wanted them to see it.

Forty-seven-year-old Christopher Alva Terrell was arrested on a weapons charge around 11:30 p.m. after witnesses told police he was showing his gun to people at the Loco Gecko Beach Shak.

A bartender told police that Terrell appeared “heavily intoxicated” and had the gun in his hands when security guards approached him. A scuffle between Terrell and the guards ensued as they tried to detain him, police cited in an incident report.

Terrell denied having the handgun and started yelling profanities as police investigated the incident, according to the report. He was charged with the unlawful carry of a pistol.

Ten hours earlier, in a parking garage at the Meridian Plaza two-and-a-half miles away, a hotel employee told police he was resting in his car during a break from work when “he was startled by someone banging on the side of his vehicle,” another report states. When the man looked up he said he saw a group of people walking up a ramp in the garage and that one of them pointed a “thick black handgun at him.”

The witness told police he heard a young, blonde-haired woman, who was with the man, say that he was “acting crazy,” the report states.

The witness described the armed suspect as a white man between 17 and 21 years old with dark hair and a medium build, wearing a shirt and shorts. He told police the man pointed the gun at him again from the back of the group’s car as it left the hotel’s parking garage.

Trash allegedly left at the location by the suspects led police to the McDonald’s at 2200 N. Kings Highway, where another employee described a man waving a gun in a car at the drive-through.

The employee told police that a guy in the back of the same car seen leaving the Meridian garage pulled out a black gun, waved it around and said “ ‘I want free food,’ trying to be cool,” police noted in their report. The gun was never pointed at the witness and no threats were made, the report says.

The suspect with the gun was described in this incident as a black man “with messed up teeth” and cornrows wearing a black hoodie with colors on it, according to the report.

Police were able to capture the vehicle’s tag number with a license plate reader at the parking garage. The investigation into the final two incidents continues.

This story was originally published February 12, 2017 at 10:52 AM with the headline "He had a gun and witnesses say he wanted them to know it."