OCALA, FL (352today.com) – Rashad Lott says he was waiting on food he had already paid for. Ocala police say he was blocking a drive-thru and refused to leave. Twenty-two months later, the case is in federal court.

Lott was arrested the evening of October 16, 2024, at the KFC on East Silver Springs Boulevard. Officers charged him with trespass after warning and resisting an officer without violence. Prosecutors later dropped the case.

He has sued the City of Ocala, several officers and police supervisors, Mayor Ben Marciano, FLG Chicken LLC, the local KFC operator, and Yum! Brands in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The lawsuit is pending. It has not been decided.

What police records describe

According to Officer John McCurdy’s sworn probable-cause affidavit, officers were called about a customer who would not move his car so other drivers could be served. McCurdy wrote that Lott “was placed under arrest for Trespass After Warning,” then refused commands to get out.

Cpl. Michael Coughlin wrote in his officer statement that he advised Lott he was “under arrest and he needed to unlock the door, or his window would be broken.”

An Ocala Police Department use-of-force review later described a different piece of the same encounter. It said Coughlin and McCurdy “gave loud and clear commands for Lott to exit the vehicle but failed to state that he was under arrest.” The same review found the force minimal and within policy.

Lott says that contradiction is the core of the case. He also believes that race was an issue, stating that he thinks he was treated differently because he is not white.

“I feel like they wouldn’t have called the police on a white person,” Lott said.

According to Lott, when the employee handling his order became frustrated with him, she said, “I don’t have to slave for you to eat,” a statement he interpreted as racial in nature.

State Attorney notes from the dropped criminal case describe a compressed encounter and state that the likelihood of conviction was “slight.” Those notes are an internal prosecutor evaluation, not a court finding.

Trespass-warning forms produced in the case file show “ARRESTED” in the signature field. Lott says later body-camera audio includes talk about locating the warning paperwork or rewriting it if it could not be found. The raw recordings, not his summaries, control that claim.

What Lott says happened

Lott’s account is that he placed a prepaid mobile order via the KFC app, staff said a sandwich was still being made, and he was told to pull forward and wait. He stayed in the drive-thru. He says he did that because he had not received the full order he paid for. A dispute followed.

Police arrived, told him he was trespassing, and pulled him from the vehicle after he refused to get out.

He says he never personally received the full order. Remaining items, he says, were handed to someone else after he was already handcuffed and banned from the property.

FLG’s own written account says Lott placed an online order, was told a fresh sandwich would take about eight minutes and was asked to park so staff could bring the food out when it was ready. Lott is trying to find out how to obtain video footage that captures the interaction that night.

“The only way I think I’ll be able to see the fast food side video is through discovery. They never released it in a criminal case. When I was fighting a criminal case, the state attorney couldn’t retrieve it from them,” Lott said.

352Today emailed KFC corporate asking whether drive-thru or window video from the Oct. 16, 2024 encounter exists and who has it; the company did not respond.

Where the case stands

The federal lawsuit remains active.

According to Lott, he does not think his case is being fought.

“I mean, from my understanding, it doesn’t feel like they’re fighting the case. They’re saying that what happened, happened. I mean, it didn’t violate the Constitution; that’s my understanding from their point of view,” Lott said.

The City of Ocala, Ocala Police Department, and the mayor’s office were asked for comment and provided a statement: “At this time, based on the advice of the City Attorney, neither Chief Balken nor Mayor Marciano will be providing comment on matters related to the pending litigation.”

Still unresolved in court are what officers actually told Lott before they pulled him from the car, when the written trespass warning was created, and what store cameras would show of the argument at the window.

FLG has denied liability in court papers. The claims against the city, the officers, and the restaurant have not yet been tried.

Lott, who has been handling the lawsuit himself, says he is not asking the public to take his word. He argues the public record, the arrest affidavit, the use-of-force review, prosecutor notes, and the warning paperwork already show a messier night than a routine fast-food trespass.

For Lott, the best-case scenario at the end of this legal battle looks like a fresh start in another town.

“I don’t like Ocala. I’m ready to get out of this city. I don’t feel safe now. So, a perfect case for me would be to be able to move my family out of this city and start over. My picture-perfect ending would be to just be out of Ocala and to be able to raise my kids without worrying,” Lott said.