A video of a Dollar General employee pursuing an alleged shoplifter with her car and then hitting him in the driveway of a home is catching a lot of attention and reaction online, gaining more than 12 million views on Twitter in two days.
It’s unclear in what city or on what date the video was taken, but Newsweek cited another Twitter page stating the incident happened on May 11 somewhere in California, although those details are unconfirmed.
Ring video from someone’s home shows a white SUV slamming into a man on a bicycle who was carrying several goods. The man fell off his bike, spilling the items across a homeowner’s driveway. A female Dollar General worker exits the car, and the two begin cursing at one another with the employee accusing the man of stealing from the store.
The employee gets out of the car to confront the man, asking “Who the f*** you think you are stealing s*** from my store?”
She pelts his bicycle off to the side before the two begin arguing while picking up the items that were spilled on the driveway.
“You don’t live the f***ing life I live,” the alleged thief says. The woman responds by saying that she lives in her car.
The woman characterizes the man as a repeat offender, mentioning at least one other occasion where he has stolen from the store.
“Who cares? Everybody steals from you [expletive] all the time. If it was your people, you wouldn’t be trippin’,” the man says.
In the video, the woman appears to be white, while the man is Black. The argument never escalated into a physical altercation.
After the woman retrieves some of the items, she returns to her car and drives away. The man was also able to pick up some of the other items.
The video was met with a mixed bag of reactions online. Some viewers praised the woman’s response to the alleged theft, while others commented that her actions were excessive and unnecessary and could amount to assault with a deadly weapon.
The man did state his intentions to press charges against the woman. California’s penal code states that to be guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, you must assault someone with a deadly weapon other than a firearm or use force likely resulting in great bodily injury.
If you’re charged with a misdemeanor, you face up to one year in county jail, a fine of up to $1,000, or both a fine and imprisonment, while a felony charge can result in a term of four years in state prison and a fine of up to $10,000 (or a combination of prison and a fine).
“It is never this serious. Baby, them people at Dollar General HQ don’t give af about you,” one person commented on Instagram.
“Dollar general? Really? If someone has to steal from there then they’re really down bad. Looks like he took food, let that go lady,” another user commented on Twitter.
In April, a Walgreens worker in Nashville shot a woman who was seven months pregnant for allegedly shoplifting. The shooting left the woman in critical but stable condition.
Police said the baby wasn’t harmed. The man believed she and another woman were hauling unpaid items out of the store and followed them out. He told police that a woman sprayed him with a can of mace, so he pulled out a gun and began shooting at them.
Back in February, in Tysons, Virginia, a man was shot in the chest by police and killed after stealing sunglasses from a shopping mall. Fairfax County officers chased 37-year-old Timothy Johnson after he ran from the mall into a heavily wooded area.
Police said those officers gave Johnson verbal commands to stop and get on the ground before Johnson was shot. It’s unclear how many times the officers fired their guns, but Johnson was shot one time in the chest. Johnson’s family questions the shooting and actions of the officers, calling the force excessive and saying Johnson posed no threat because he was unarmed.
