A former Wendy’s manager in Tennessee was arrested last month after allegedly tying a neurodivergent employee to a grill at the fast-food restaurant.

Michiko Burton, 19, acknowledged the allegations and was charged by the Murfreesboro Police Department with misdemeanor simple assault and false imprisonment.

Burton told police on September 6 that the incident was part of a TikTok trend and admitted to restraining the employee, Fox 8 reported.

The case was referred to Adult Protective Services, while detectives from the Special Victims Unit investigated the incident.

Isaac Kimes, an attorney representing the employee’s family, described the episode as deeply traumatic in an interview with Fox 8.

“The young man in the video seen now by millions is not doing well,” Kimes said.

He added that the family, like many others, believes tying an employee to a grill was “absolutely inappropriate, unsafe, and dehumanizing.”

“Dave Thomas wouldn’t approve of chaining an employee to a grill,” Kimes said, referring to Wendy’s founder.

Burton was booked into the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center on a $2,000 bond. Her next court appearance is scheduled for October 22.

Murfreesboro police interviewed the employee, who told officers that he was not upset and had not been injured.

However, Kimes said this week that the family is considering legal action and asked police to reopen the investigation after video appeared to show the worker tied to kitchen equipment.

The video was recorded by another employee, Nicholus Murphy.

“I actually felt sad for him,” Murphy said. “I actually wanted to cry.”

Murphy said Burton told staff she needed the neurodivergent employee to “stay put” while she handled work in the back office.

The employee was reportedly restrained near the grill for approximately seven minutes.

According to the police report, Burton said the incident was intended as a joke and followed a TikTok trend. Murphy and the employee’s family have challenged that explanation.

“If there was a TikTok trend, then where’s the TikTok?” Murphy said.

In a recorded meeting with staff, an area manager called the incident ‘unacceptable’ and said Burton was no longer employed at the restaurant.

The Wendy’s general manager also confirmed that a manager was fired because of the incident, according to WSMV4.

In a statement, Wendy’s of Bowling Green, the franchisee that owns and operates the restaurant, said: ‘The safety and well-being of our employees is our top priority.

‘This behavior is inconsistent with our values and the standards we expect in our restaurants.

‘Upon learning of the situation, it was promptly investigated and appropriate action was taken.

‘We remain committed to maintaining a respectful workplace where all employees are treated with dignity and respect.’

The Daily Mail contacted Burton, Kimes and Wendy’s for comment. 

Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is edging closer to freedom as a revealing new documentary brings her spectacular downfall back into the public eye.

The convicted fraudster, whose husband says in the film that he once questioned whether she was “scamming” him, is expected to leave federal prison next August and transfer to a halfway house in Texas.

The reported move comes just weeks before the release of You Can See Everything, a documentary offering an intimate view of Holmes’ final days at home before she surrendered to begin her lengthy sentence.

Holmes, 42, has reportedly been cleared to transfer from the minimum-security federal prison where she has been held since May 2023 to a community corrections center near Austin.

She is scheduled to move to the Austin Transitional Center in Del Valle on August 23, 2027, according to an update from the Department of Justice’s Victim Notification System obtained by ABC News.

The transfer would represent a dramatic shift for the former Silicon Valley star, once celebrated as a visionary entrepreneur before her blood-testing company collapsed in spectacular fashion.

Rather than remain at Federal Prison Camp Bryan, Holmes would spend the final portion of her sentence at a supervised facility intended to help federal inmates readjust to life outside prison.

The Austin Transitional Center is a privately operated, 460-bed community corrections facility located about seven miles southeast of downtown Austin.

ABC News reported that Holmes is expected to live in Austin after her eventual release and remain under the supervision of the United States Probation Office.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to confirm the reported transfer, saying it “does not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual, including release plans.”

“Additionally, per BOP policy, specific designation information cannot be released until after an individual arrives at their designated institution,” a spokesperson said.

Holmes is serving her sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, the minimum-security women’s facility that also houses convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

She was convicted in 2022 on four counts of fraud and conspiracy related to investors in Theranos.

In the documentary, scheduled for release next month, Holmes’ husband acknowledges that he worried his wife might be scamming him.

Director Nathan Fielder lived with Holmes and followed her with a film crew for 34 days as she prepared to begin her 11-year prison sentence.

In 2022, Holmes, 42, pled guilty to four counts of fraud after it was discovered that her biotech company, Theranos, was misleading its investors about its technology. 

Theranos claimed it could conduct hundreds of blood tests using only a single drop of blood obtained through a finger prick, causing the company’s value to skyrocket to $9 billion, but a series of Wall Street Journal articles exposed the fraud. 

A trailer for the highly-anticipated You Can See Everything features several dramatized glimpses into the private home life of the convicted fraudster and her husband Billy Evans, heir to the billion-dollar Evans Hotel Group.

Holmes and Evans met in 2017, two years after The Wall Street Journal published their expose. The couple has since welcomed two children, a son and a daughter, in the last five years. 

Holmes’s husband believes he fell in love with her before he learned she was behind the Theranos fraud, he revealed in a conversation with Fielder. 

‘I fell in love in that first conversation,’ he stated.

When Fielder asked him if he was ever suspicious that his wife was after his family’s fortune, Evans furrowed his brow in confusion. 

‘100%, but what was she going to gain from me?’ he said. 

‘Isn’t your family rich…?’ Fielder responded. 

Evans deflected with a generalization: ‘There’s a lot of different levels of wealth,’ he said before the video cuts off. 

Evans assured Fielder that he has never been suspicious of Holmes lying to him in a one-on-one conversation shown in the trailer.  

The trailer features silent footage of the couple jogging along a foggy beach together, holding hands in their kitchen, and holding one of their two young children while sitting on the rainbow-colored floor of a playroom inside their beachfront home in San Diego, California. 

The aforementioned shot was instinctively filmed through the bars of a crib, which cast a blurry grid over Holmes, foreshadowing what’s to come as she prepares for her incarceration. 

‘I still have this weird feeling that there are some things I’m not seeing,’ Fielder says to Holmes, his face directly confronting hers as the trailer comes to its dramatic climax. 

‘I don’t have anything to hide,’ Holmes said, staring deeply into Fielder’s eyes, inches away from his looming gaze. 

A stylish San Francisco apartment is being marketed for rent, despite allegations that its former occupant was shot and killed by the property’s landlord.

The three-bedroom home in the Outer Sunset neighborhood appears attractive on paper, offering abundant natural light, a garage and backyard for $6,300 a month.

Yet the seemingly conventional rental comes with a deeply unsettling history.

Philippe Chagniot, a 68-year-old retired dentist, has been charged with killing 58-year-old Eric Bigone outside the residence on May 17.

Prosecutors allege that Chagniot placed a fire on the roof of Bigone’s car. When Bigone went outside to see what was happening, authorities say Chagniot shot him twice in the back with a suppressed MAC-10 submachine gun.

The property is still connected to the Chagniot 2007 Family Trust, which lists Philippe Chagniot and his wife, Barbara, among its beneficiaries.

In a wrongful death lawsuit, Bigone’s son, Dino, claims Chagniot killed his father in an effort to make the property available for sale. A San Francisco judge has temporarily blocked any sale while the case proceeds.

Leasing the house, however, apparently remains an option.

Homes.com records show that the property entered the rental market on August 22 at $8,000 per month. After failing to attract tenants, the asking rent was cut this month to $6,300.

Broker Renee Engelen confirmed to the San Francisco Standard that she is working with the Chagniots to find tenants for the unsettling property.

Engelen said California law requires her to disclose crimes committed on a property within the previous two years. She also noted, however, that Bigone was shot on the sidewalk rather than on the property itself.

According to Engelen, the lease does alert prospective tenants to the alleged killing. She declined to release a copy, citing privileged information, and would not say whether Barbara Chagniot or someone representing the couple hired her.

At least one prospective tenant learned about the home’s grim past almost by chance.

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After viewing the house, the woman became suspicious when she noticed it was owned by a family trust. An online search soon led her to news reports about Bigone’s death.

When she questioned an evasive employee at the brokerage about the shooting, she said the response was strikingly casual: the house had “a bit of history.”

The woman, who requested anonymity because she feared unwanted attention toward her business, said she might have overlooked the disclosure while reading the lease.

“I wasn’t looking for whether someone had been killed in the lease,” she said.

What troubled her more was the possibility that her rent could ultimately benefit the family of the man accused of killing the previous tenant.

‘My money would presumably be benefiting this family,’ she said.

For neighbors, the idea of turning the house into a rental is difficult to separate from what took place there.

Bridgett, who has lived on the same street since 2017 and declined to give her last name because of privacy concerns, called Bigone ‘a great neighbor.’ 

She said his killing had ‘terrorized’ the neighborhood and was furious when she learned the house was being offered for rent.

‘That’s such bulls***,’ she said. ‘I’m upset, sick.’

If someone moves in, Bridgett said, she and other neighbors plan to knock on the door and tell the new tenants themselves about Bigone’s killing. ‘That house shouldn’t be rented,’ she said firmly.

Across the street, 78-year-old Gabriella Smith has lived since 2011. When The Standard told her the asking rent, her jaw dropped. She said workers had been coming and going from the property about two weeks earlier.

But renovations and a fresh coat of polish can only do so much to change a home’s history. Heeding a word of warning, Smith said, ‘I’d be careful renting from someone like that.’

For the prospective tenant who nearly signed a lease, the experience has been enough to put her enticing house hunt on hold. Shaken by how close she came to renting from a potential murderer, she and her fiancé are content to remain in their Outer Richmond home for now.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Renee Engelen for comment.