California Retail Employee Shares Photo Of Her Battered Face After Being Attacked By A Customer
May 24, 2020
California Retail Employee Shares Photo Of Her Battered Face After Being Attacked By A Customer
'It was so fast, I couldn't even put my hands up,' said Samantha Clarke.
'It was so fast, I couldn't even put my hands up,' said Samantha Clarke.
Samantha Clarke of Modesto, California, is an employee at a Big 5 sporting goods store. Earlier this month, she was attacked by an angry customer who was allegedly furious that the store did not carry the product she was looking for. Clarke is now legally allowed to talk about the incident and has shared a photo of her bloody and beaten face so others will know what retail workers are going through amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Fox News.
The alleged attack reportedly occurred on May 6. The woman who attacked Clarke was reportedly angry that the store was not permitted to reserve an item for her for longer than 30 minutes. Clarke did not blame the woman for her anger at the time.
“So the lady was upset, understandably. I could understand that she was upset,” she recalled.
However, Clarke also did not expect what was coming next. Before she could think twice, the woman began throwing items at her. A piece of metal hit Clarke in the face.
“It was so fast, I couldn’t even put my hands up. I had no idea she was going to hit me, like, didn’t see it coming,” she said of the incident.
In the photo that she shared of herself after the incident, blood can be seen streaming from the top of her eye all the way down her face to her neck. Unfortunately, the suspect behind the attack has not yet been located.
However, police were able to attain an image of the woman which has been shared on social media in hopes that someone might recognize her or be able to provide information regarding her identity.
“Never in a million years thought that I was going to be hit in the face for doing my job,” Clarke said.
Now that Clarke is allowed to publicly discuss the attack as much as she pleases, she has no intention to remain quiet about what happened to her. She has started a public Facebook page called “Retail life during Covid-19.” The purpose behind the page is to help others see that retail workers are human too and do not deserve to be treated poorly for doing their jobs.
“I’m hoping this will bring more awareness to what we are going through as front line employees,” she wrote in a recent Facebook post on the page.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, some states, like California, are slowly beginning to re-open stores and restaurants. Nevertheless, social distancing is still required during this time.