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(Warning; this story is mildly graphic, but the good guys win.)
It's about a quarter after two a few weeks ago. Typical Friday night graveyard shift. I'm stocking an aisle when a page comes over the radio for a supervisor to come to the cash register. Typically, at this hour, calls to the front are one of three things; an override on a transaction with too many voided items, getting cigarettes out of the cage, or arguing with a customer who doesn't understand that the cutoff for alcohol sales is 2 AM. Tonight, it was far stranger.
The cashier tells me that a woman who had just finished shopping had come back inside and told her a man in the parking lot was trying to take money from her and her friend. I assumed she was talking about a pushy panhandler, which we get our share of late at night, and calmly walk outside to see what's going on. As I step out the door, I hear several female voices yelling and screaming coming from behind a car parked in the handicap stall. I run over and this is what I see;
A young African-American woman pinned to the ground. Her skirt and underpants have been removed and she is naked from the waist down. An older white man wearing only a pair of cargo shorts is on top of her with the removed garments in one hand, throwing punches at her and shouting racial epithets and something about him having brain damage. And three other African-American women trying to pull him off of her. All of this is happening in a mess of broken eggs from several cartons that have fallen on the ground and been crushed, stomped, and rolled upon.
I immediately grab my walkie and call that we need the police called right away. My boss asks what's going on and I tell her we've got a woman being assaulted in the parking lot. She runs out with several of our bigger and burlier employees, who jump into the fray and manage to get the woman free and pin him face down on the pavement while my manager calls 911. (I wish I could say I'd assisted in the takedown myself, but I haven't thrown a punch since I was a kid.)
It takes a good ten minutes for the cops to show up, and while we wait and the attacker continues to shout about how he has brain damage and begs to be let go, one of the other women explains what happened; her sister, the victim, had been having an asthma attack and pulled into the lot so she could catch her breath. He, apparently unprovoked, started yelling at them, throwing epithets around, and accusing them of not being entitled to park in a handicap spot (they did not in fact have a handicap placard; they parked there because it was the closest spot available so she could get some air). At some point, this escalated into him deciding to grab her purse and phone, which they were arguing over when the sister ran inside and alerted the cashier. The other two women didn't even know either party, but intervened on their own when the situation escalated.
Long story short, the attacker gets handcuffed and taken away, and the young woman, aside from some minor bumps and bruises, is physically unharmed and didn't need medical attention. The attacker's wife showed up at the store in the morning to pick up his car - and made time to complain to one of the other supervisors that his groceries had gone bad while sitting in the car for so many hours. That, evidently, was her top priority.
The Store is located in kind of a rough neighborhood, but this is the single most insane thing I've seen happen on the property since it opened. It's fortunate we were able to intervene and stop it from getting any worse than it did, but it's kind of scary that someone could just snap on a total stranger like that.
It's about a quarter after two a few weeks ago. Typical Friday night graveyard shift. I'm stocking an aisle when a page comes over the radio for a supervisor to come to the cash register. Typically, at this hour, calls to the front are one of three things; an override on a transaction with too many voided items, getting cigarettes out of the cage, or arguing with a customer who doesn't understand that the cutoff for alcohol sales is 2 AM. Tonight, it was far stranger.
The cashier tells me that a woman who had just finished shopping had come back inside and told her a man in the parking lot was trying to take money from her and her friend. I assumed she was talking about a pushy panhandler, which we get our share of late at night, and calmly walk outside to see what's going on. As I step out the door, I hear several female voices yelling and screaming coming from behind a car parked in the handicap stall. I run over and this is what I see;
A young African-American woman pinned to the ground. Her skirt and underpants have been removed and she is naked from the waist down. An older white man wearing only a pair of cargo shorts is on top of her with the removed garments in one hand, throwing punches at her and shouting racial epithets and something about him having brain damage. And three other African-American women trying to pull him off of her. All of this is happening in a mess of broken eggs from several cartons that have fallen on the ground and been crushed, stomped, and rolled upon.
I immediately grab my walkie and call that we need the police called right away. My boss asks what's going on and I tell her we've got a woman being assaulted in the parking lot. She runs out with several of our bigger and burlier employees, who jump into the fray and manage to get the woman free and pin him face down on the pavement while my manager calls 911. (I wish I could say I'd assisted in the takedown myself, but I haven't thrown a punch since I was a kid.)
It takes a good ten minutes for the cops to show up, and while we wait and the attacker continues to shout about how he has brain damage and begs to be let go, one of the other women explains what happened; her sister, the victim, had been having an asthma attack and pulled into the lot so she could catch her breath. He, apparently unprovoked, started yelling at them, throwing epithets around, and accusing them of not being entitled to park in a handicap spot (they did not in fact have a handicap placard; they parked there because it was the closest spot available so she could get some air). At some point, this escalated into him deciding to grab her purse and phone, which they were arguing over when the sister ran inside and alerted the cashier. The other two women didn't even know either party, but intervened on their own when the situation escalated.
Long story short, the attacker gets handcuffed and taken away, and the young woman, aside from some minor bumps and bruises, is physically unharmed and didn't need medical attention. The attacker's wife showed up at the store in the morning to pick up his car - and made time to complain to one of the other supervisors that his groceries had gone bad while sitting in the car for so many hours. That, evidently, was her top priority.
The Store is located in kind of a rough neighborhood, but this is the single most insane thing I've seen happen on the property since it opened. It's fortunate we were able to intervene and stop it from getting any worse than it did, but it's kind of scary that someone could just snap on a total stranger like that.
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