Whole Foods' security guard is fired after 'slamming
a customer into concrete pillars before choking him unconscious in
bloody attack when he tried to pay with food stamps'
- WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
- A Whole Foods Market security guard in Oakland has been fired after he allegedly assaulted a customer Thursday night
- The attack reportedly began inside the store and an eyewitness shared disturbing images of the bloodied victim to Facebook
- Witness Zoe Marks says the victim was not 'shouting' or being 'violent' before the guard slammed the man into concrete pillars
- Marks says the guard put the shopper into a chokehold and 'suffocated' him before throwing him on the ground outside unconscious
- Police are investigating the incident and the victim is in stable condition at a local hospital
Published:
20:50 EST, 4 September 2015
|
Updated:
01:11 EST, 5 September 2015
Go to the Dailymail link to see the photos:
An
armed security guard working at the Whole Foods Market in Oakland,
California has been fired after he reportedly beat one customer to a
bloody pulp Thursday night.
The
alleged violent assault began inside the store located on Bay Place
near Lake Merritt around 9:30pm, according to the store's spokeswoman
Beth Krauss.
Zoe
Marks, an eye witness to the attack who is in the United States on a
visit from Edinburgh, Scotland, shared disturbing images of
the victim and her account of the incident to Facebook.
In an interview with the Oakland Tribune,
Marks said that she saw the argument between the cashier and the victim
as he was trying to use an EBT card, which is a food stamp card that
operates like a debit card, to buy food from the store.
...
Marks said that the victim was not 'shouting' or 'violent' and that he wasn't threatening anyone.
'He wasn't shouting at anyone. He wasn't violent or disruptive,' Marks said of the customer to the Tribune.
'There was no threat from him to any of the customers or employees. (We) felt safe until the security guard attacked him.'
On Facebook, Marks described the 'violent assault' by saying that the guard 'slammed' the victim against 'concrete pillars.'
...
In
the post, she added that the guard put the shopper into a chokehold and
'suffocated' him before throwing him on the ground unconscious.
Marks claims that the guard allegedly locked the man out of the store even though he was unconscious on the pavement.
The
graphic images Marks took of the victim have been widely shared across
social media, with many people sending tweets to the Whole Foods Market
Twitter account, questioning what the store was doing to address this
situation.
In
one response to a user, a Whole Foods' official tweeted 'We're moving
quickly to gather the facts, we want to make it clear that we take a
zero tolerance approach to violence.'
…
In
another tweet, an official wrote that 'We are taking this very
seriously. The security guard involved in incident has been permanently
removed from all WFM stores.'
Oakland police are investigating the incident and the identities of the victim and guard have not been publicly released.
Police say that the victim is in stable condition at a local hospital.
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