SoCal store employees fight thief who bear-sprayed them
Meza’s Jewelry robbery: Moment store workers fight back against attempted thief who bear sprays them and smashes up California store
- Video captured an attempted robbery at a jewelry store in Southern California
- The suspect allegedly bear sprayed employees and customers in the incident
- Police say the man did not take any merchandise but managed to get away
This is the moment an attempted thief was chased out of a jewelry store in California after receiving a beatdown from employees he had just bear sprayed.
In the shocking footage, a shirtless man is seen running out of Meza’s Jewelry Store in El Monte as workers chase him away from the shop.
Cops told local outlets the man entered the store Saturday afternoon and began shattering display cases after he sprayed the employees to pull off his theft.
The attempted robbery took a turn when the fed-up workers decided to fight back and ‘engaged the suspect – hitting, punching, and kicking him out of the store.
It’s the latest in a recent series of appalling robberies and attempted robberies at California stores as brazen thieves take advantage of loose theft laws in the state.
Video shows the moment an attempted thief was chased out of a jewelry store in California after receiving a beatdown from employees he had just bear sprayed
In the shocking footage, a shirtless man is seen running out of Meza’s Jewelry Store in El Monte as workers chase him away from the establishment
The man fled down the street as the employees chased after him and his pants fell down
The incident happened Saturday when an unidentified suspect entered Meza’s Jewelry Store in El Monte – a city located east of Los Angeles – around 2.20pm.
ABC 7 spoke with one of the store’s employees who said the man was armed with a hammer when he entered the store.
The man immediately got to work and sprayed the employees and workers with bear repellant and then moved to the display cases where he began smashing.
Instead of letting the man smash-and-grab his way through the store, three employees began fighting back and took on the suspect.
‘Me, my uncle and my dad were tugging him out,’ a worker told ABC7. I was trying to defend my family because as you could see he was hitting my dad and my uncle.’
Video shows the three men punching and kicking the suspect and even using a long stick to beat down on the man just seconds before he is chased out of the store.
Before he can exit through the front door, however, one of the workers grabs on to the man’s top, prompting the attempted thief to slide out of it to get away.
He then flees from the store, running down the street as his pants fall down and he briefly flashes the person recording the video.
The employees continue to chase after him and engage him before he eventually walks away.
Police say the man fled the scene in a gray Dodge Charger.
The man had his shirt pulled off of him as he was fighting the employees in the doorway
This photo shows the moment that one of the store employees began to fight back
One of the employees is seen tussling with the would-be thief during the attempted robbery
Online, users applauded the employees for standing up to the would-be burglar and
‘People need to start fighting back and things like this will stop,’ on person on YouTube wrote.
‘Time for store owners to protect their business, coworkers, and customers and fight back against this criminals,’ another chimed in.
‘Well done employees!!’ a third added.
The incident comes just days after a group of thieves entered a nearby jewelry store in Pasadena and pulled off a heist where they pepper sprayed the owner.
‘As soon as they pepper sprayed me, I knew what’s happening,’ said Sam Bibikiam, owner of Jewels on Lake.
‘It was going from my mind that ‘I hope nobody pulls a pistol and shoots around,’ he said. ‘But nothing like that happened.
The suspects in that incident have yet to be identified or arrested.
The group got away with an approximate $500,000 in merchandise.
This is Meza’s Jewelry Store in El Monte
Over the weekend, DailyMail.com shared photos and videos from another appalling robbery where brazen thieves were caught on camera casually walking out with $9,000 worth of goods from separate California stores.
A group of masked thieves stormed into a Home Depot store in Signal Hill on August 27 and stole $5,000 worth of power tools in full view of shocked staff.
The seven men loaded two shopping carts with expensive goods and carried as much as possible in their arms before walking out.
In a separate incident the next day, a man and a woman ransacked a Nordstrom shop in an Irvine mall.
Surveillance footage shows the pair strolling into the store before running out with armfuls of stolen items and fleeing the scene in a getaway car.
A group of masked thieves stormed into a Home Depot store in Signal Hill on August 27 and stole $5,000 worth of power tools in full view of shocked staff and customers
In a separate incident the next day, a man and a woman ransacked a Nordstrom shop in an Irvine mall
In San Francisco, the issue has gotten so bad that numerous retailers have completely left the Bay Area.
Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in San Francisco’s Union Square area, 107 were still operating in July, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.
A host of major chains, including Whole Foods, Brooks Brothers and Office Depot have shuttered stores.
High-end retailer Nordstrom cut almost 400 jobs as it shut all its stores in San Francisco amid rising crime and a faltering economy in the city.
A San Francisco family-owned hardware store lost a staggering $700,000 in a single year to ‘organized shoplifting’.
Dale Hardware’s owner Kyle Smith described the helpless situation in Fremont – and said his grandfather, who founded the shop in 1955, would ‘roll in his grave’ if he knew about the unbridled shoplifting.
Remaining stores like Target have been reduced to locking up their entire stock behind glass to deter shoplifters.
The new security measures came after an employee revealed they were being shoplifted every 10 minutes.
Multiple products including shampoo, deodorant, toothbrushes and food items are now kept behind glass or Perspex barriers that require staff to open them.
Larceny thefts in San Francisco, which include retail thefts, fell significantly during the pandemic but has been growing every year since.
There were 36,537 thefts last year and there have been 21,396 so far in 2023.
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