Posted on 03/11/2021 11:21:07 AM PST by real saxophonist
Lakewood mom held at gunpoint because of inaccurate 911 call and her baby’s toy gun
by: Lori Jane Gliha
Updated: Mar 11, 2021
LAKEWOOD, Colo. (KDVR) – Several Lakewood police agents held a woman and her boyfriend at gunpoint in January after the police received false information that someone in the couple’s car had threatened a Walmart asset protection employee with a gun.
“I hate to say it, but I actually played the scenario in my head of shots going off,” said Celeste Lopez, a mother of four boys. “I could feel it, like, my heart started racing. I could feel the adrenaline.”
When police pulled them over, Lopez, who had just given birth days earlier, was in the car with her then-boyfriend and two of her four sons, including 1-year-old Louie and an infant named Ace. They had just finished a shopping trip to the Walmart on the 7400 block of West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood.
“When they yelled, ‘Gun!’ I felt like, ‘What gun?’ You know?” said Lopez, who told the FOX31 Problem Solvers she was asked to lay prone on the ground while police told them their car had been linked to an armed robbery.
“We were pretty surrounded,” Lopez said.
Moments earlier, a Walmart asset protection employee, who said she was suspicious that Lopez had stolen something, had followed Lopez into the parking lot to get her license plate and was spooked by Louie’s toy gun, as the child played with it in the front seat.
She called 911.
“Hi, I have a shoplift in progress,” the store employee told a 911 operator. “They pulled a gun on me,” she said. “The person in the driver’s seat has a gun.”
The operator asked, “And did they point it at you?” The employee responded, “Yeah.”
At the time, the only person in the driver’s seat of the parked car was the 1-year-old, who was playing with his toy.
No crime committed
As police would later discover, no one stole anything from the store.
Lopez, who can be seen in Walmart surveillance video purchasing items through a typical check-out line and leaving the store with a cart filled with bagged groceries, had not shoplifted anything.
During the course of her 911 call, the Walmart employee eventually admitted to the operator that she had not seen the person with the gun.
“They held the gun outside of the window,” she said to the dispatcher.
“So, the person that had the gun – I want you to describe them. Asian? Black? Hispanic? Native? White?” the operator asked.
“I did not see the person,” said the Walmart employee.
The dispatcher asked whether the person had pointed the gun at the caller. “No.” she said. “They just – they hung it outside the window when I went to go get their plates.”
By this time, the police had already been dispatched with the information that a “robbery just occurred at gunpoint.”
A spokesperson for the Lakewood Police Department said agents responded to the situation with their duty weapons because they received information that a felony had just occurred with a deadly weapon.
“We have the situation that was given to us at hand – that someone would have a gun – so we would respond with our guns as well because the threat is there,” said John Romero, a public information officer for the Lakewood Police Department.
Although Lopez insists the guns were pointed at both adults and at Louie, Romero said the agents on the scene did not point any weapons at the boy.
“From what I understand, weapons were never pointed at a child. The weapons were pointed at the adults who were pulled out of the car because of the report we received that someone in the car threatened, I believe, an employee of the store with a gun,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate all the way around,” he said. “That said, I’m very proud of the way our agents handled it and were able to de-escalate that situation so quickly.”
Lopez said the agents were trying to instruct her son to put the gun down, but he didn’t understand what to do.
“They actually said, ‘Slap the gun out of his hand now,’” she said. “He’s a baby. He don’t know.”
Lopez said she feared that her son could have been shot.
“It just breaks my heart…every time I replay it. I really wish (the Walmart employee) took the time to say, ‘I really think you’re stealing.’”
Walmart Response
A Walmart spokesperson apologized for the incident. Payton McCormick, a spokesperson for the company, issued the following statement:
“Our goal is for every customer to have a pleasant and safe shopping experience at all our stores and we have training and policies in place to make sure that happens. In this case, the incident was escalated unnecessarily and we apologize for the situation. We are following up with the store to ensure all policies are being upheld.”
Gotta be tacticool.
a lot of fail from the 911 dispatcher, the wallyworld employee.
Well in India (or was it Pakistan) a nine month old baby was charged with spying; actually went to trial.
I thought Walmart had very strict policies about employees not chasing after suspected shoplifters.
“The person who made the phone call perceived the situation in a way that differed from actual reality.”
The word you are looking for is “Lied.” She lied.
One that you can use for killing flies.
Give the employee an overly important sounding title, lots of literature and pep rallies to go along with it. Be surprised when they over achieve.
I was a loss prevention agent for Jewel/Osco.
Right up there with sanitation engineer
Once upon a time, I was not a security guard. I was a Public Safety Officer.
In 1984 when Reagan was running for reelection, Geo. H.W. Bush made a campaign stop where I was at university. I knew a woman that went to see him that had a 6-year-old boy at home. They were searching all women’s handbags and found her son’s toy Derringer cap-gun in her purse. She didn’t know it was there. The Secret Service had Venus spread-eagle on the ground until they figured out what was in her purse.
But, that wasn’t a neighbor/teacher/social worker being a busybody.
Because it was 90% lies. Employee needs to at least been fined for making a false report.
They do. All they’re supposed to do when someone is carrying out a big screen tv is smile and tell them to have nice day. The end.
Sounds like the call to 911 was personal.
Sue Walmart for all you can get. And don’t blame the cops since they get caught in the middle of these situations.
The employee is obviously a progressive snowflake.
it’s a big scary liberal rifle description meant to beef up a narrative, hypebole
I grew up as a sacker in Krogers and found ou the hard way about company policies. I was putting sacks in the trunk of a car and saw a black teen jump on a new bike outside the store in the line of about 15 bikes. He started to tear out at full speed across the parking lot. I stopped what I was doing and ran after him. He almost got hit by a car and was trapped between a moving car and a parked car so I caught him. He was about 14-15 years old. I took him and the bike back to the store and met the manager in the lobby. I figured I would get a reward or my picture in the paper. The bike was about $79.95 so that was a felony back in the day.
The Manager had called the cops and they took the kid into the booth to speak to him. I proceed to get my ass chewed out in the lobby of Krogers. They said. "What if he got hurt? What if He rammed into a car running from you?, What makes you think he won't charge you with kidnapping? It's just a bike, what if he pulled a gun or knife on you?" This went on for 10 minutes in front of customers. The perp waited for mommy for 10 minutes and Kroger didn't file charges and let him go. I can't prove it but I heard she got a gift certificate for groceries.
I'm not sure what I was supposed to learn from this incident, but I just watched shoplifters haul out hundreds of dollars worth of merch and kept sacking groceries.
Did anybody "freeze frame" the woman and try to read her tats? Was it code or Hieroglyphics? Was it a list of lovers names? Did she know Tats are permanent? What an ugly mess.
to people who do not know guns, everything is a gun...
idiots.
Right except the “he” you refer to was actually a young clueless girl.
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