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Wild teens packing loaded guns, punching workers and smoking weed in the booths forced a Roxbury McDonald's to close its dining room — now it reopens with POLICE GUARDS inside

Wednesday, June 24, 2026
5 min read
MDN Staff
Wild teens packing loaded guns, punching workers and smoking weed in the booths forced a Roxbury McDonald's to close its dining room — now it reopens with POLICE GUARDS inside

An immigrant family built 19 Boston McDonald's franchises. The city's only fix for the chaos at one of them: cops, the DA and four nonprofits stationed permanently inside the dining room.

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ROXBURY — The Warren Street McDonald's that reopened its dining room on Monday has been on Boston Police's incident map for years. Eleven- and 13-year-olds taken into custody after a fight at this McDonald's in April 2022, tied to a separate Downtown Crossing assault. Children throwing rocks at customers and employees in 2024. Two teens hanging around outside with loaded guns, according to Boston Police, in February 2025.
Most recently, the weed-smoking, frozen-drink-throwing, booth-trashing chaos that drove the immigrant family that owns the restaurant to close the dining room from 1 to 5 p.m. every weekday. Monday's reopening only happened because cops are now stationed inside so customers can eat in peace.

Inside the dining room

Wild teens smoked weed at the booths. They threw punches at the workers. They hurled frozen drinks across the dining room. And they trashed the leather seats so violently and so often that the replacement upholstery no longer matches the originals. The dining room became, according to the Boston Globe, a serious safety problem for employees and customers alike.
Not one Boston official suggested holding any of these teens accountable.
The Roxbury McDonald's was already operating defensively long before this week — customers have been ordering through a window cut into a vestibule wall for months, visible in a customer photo posted to Google reviews this year.
Inside the Roxbury McDonald's vestibule, where customers order through a window built into the wall.
Inside the Roxbury McDonald's vestibule, where customers order through a window built into the wall. The defensive ordering setup predates this week's dining-room reopening. Photo: customer photo posted to Google reviews earlier this year.

An American Dream gets trashed

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Vijay Selhi with his sons Cherag and Anurag, co-owners of 19 Boston McDonald's franchises.
Vijay Selhi (center) with his sons Cherag (left) and Anurag (right), co-owners of 19 Boston McDonald's franchises, at the counter of one of their restaurants. Photo: Dorchester Reporter.
The owners are the Selhi family. Patriarch Vijay Selhi arrived from India in the 1980s and took a maintenance job at a Somerville McDonald's. He worked his way up to manager, bought his first franchise in 2015, and brought his two sons into the business. The Selhis now own 19 McDonald's restaurants across Boston — most of the city's footprint.
"Our purpose right now is giving our dad a legacy," co-owner Cherag Selhi said. "So for us, family culture is at the forefront of all our decision-making."
That legacy now requires permanent law enforcement inside one of their restaurants just to keep the dining room open after school lets out.

What the Globe called it

The Globe called it a "grand reopening." It described a "team of local law enforcement and youth service providers ... presenting a united front against the unruly teenage crowds." The paper approvingly cited Mayor Michelle Wu's summer-jobs plan and blamed the chaos on "lasting impacts of pandemic school closures, rampant social media use, [and] economic instability."
What the Globe called a "united front" is, in plain terms: the Suffolk DA's juvenile unit, the Boston Police Department, the Boston Public Schools chief of safety, the Roxbury YMCA, the Center for Teen Empowerment, and Project R.I.G.H.T. — all of them now committed to standing inside a fast-food restaurant during after-school hours. The full weight of municipal Boston, deployed inside a McDonald's, because the city would not make the teens face a single consequence.

"Other locations" too

Cherag Selhi told the Globe similar closures have been necessary at other McDonald's locations across Boston — and he hopes the Roxbury model can be exported to those franchises too. That is the city's blueprint for fast-food retail in 2026: lock the dining room for hours every day, deputize the cops and the DA to babysit, and hope the kids behave.

The timing

Even the teens noticed: one of the regulars quoted in the Globe pointed out the reopening landed on the last day of Boston Public Schools and called the timing "a little suspect." The youth-service providers say they will "ramp up" before fall.
The chaos is on summer hiatus.

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Wild teens packing loaded guns, punching workers and smoking weed in the booths forced a Roxbury McDonald's to close its dining room — now it reopens with POLICE GUARDS inside - Mass Daily News