A Colorado supermarket worker who witnessed a large-scale laundry detergent theft by three men was reportedly fired after filming the crime and sharing it on social media.
“All I did was film and report criminals,” Santino Burrola, a former supermarket clerk at King Snoopers, explained in an interview with CBS Colorado on Monday.
The employee, who doesn’t understand his former employer’s decision, said he witnessed a robbery when three men rushed out of the store with a basket full of detergent.
He would then have followed them to their vehicle where the three, visibly alarmed by the clerk’s presence, would have rushed to throw the cargo in, then grabbed it again and fled.
“Really, brother? Do you have to put up with that? “The economy isn’t too bad,” the employee can be heard throwing at the three men in the video shared on TikTok, which quickly racked up more than 1.5 million views.
The witness had just time to remove an aluminum sheet covering the car’s license plate before she left the scene with a bang.
He then reportedly contacted police, who reportedly thanks to the video were able to locate and arrest the driver of the vehicle, 32-year-old Jorge Pantoja, CBS reported Monday. The other two men have yet to be identified.
Even so, he would have been fired his next shift because there is a company policy that prohibits employees from pursuing or intervening in a theft, he told American media, complaining that he was being punished for doing the right thing.
“I would never condone criminal behavior, especially if it happened right before my eyes, he would have hammered.” I hope this story will change politics […] to empower retail workers like me.”
For his part, King Soopers declined to comment on the specific case, limiting himself in a statement to saying that he had “taken security measures to prevent crime and de-escalate this type of confrontation to minimize the risks”. sent to CBS.