Over the past couple of years, it's become increasingly common for gun store burglars to use stolen cars to smash their way into the business before using another stolen vehicle to quickly escape with purloined pistols, rifles, and other merchandise. I haven't seen too many instances where non-gun stores have been subject to the same type of attack, but that might be changing.
Police in Stow, Ohio say a crew of at least four people used a stolen vehicle to crash into a Circle K convenience store early Monday morning in the hopes of snatching up whatever they could get their hands on. They may even have been trying to damage the ATM inside the store in order to get the cash inside. Their efforts were largely foiled, though, by an armed store clerk.
After the suspects got out of vehicles, authorities say the Circle K clerk pulled out a weapon and fired seven gunshots at the suspects, who then fled the area. One man, 25-year-old Cleveland native Peirion Jackson, was arrested by police shortly thereafter while running in the area of Steels Corners Road and Wyoga Lake Boulevard in Cuyahoga Falls. The remaining suspects escaped in the second stolen van after the first was left abandoned in the gas station parking lot.
Jackson, according to authorities, is associated with a gang called the Heartless Felons and is currently on parole after a previous robbery conviction. At last report he's the only one of the suspected robbers in custody, and police say they don't know if any of the robbers who got away were injured by the clerk's shots.
Circle K's policy appears to prohibit employees from carrying anything for self-defense while on the job, and if employees are caught with a gun they can be suspended or even fired. In 2017, a Circle K clerk in New Mexico was suspended for two weeks after shooting a suspected armed robber, and more recently the company fired a 72-year-old clerk in Colorado for violating the company's policy against confronting shoplifters even though the woman claimed she only "extend[ed]her arms defensively" after she was confronted by a knife-wielding robber who demanded cigarettes.
The woman sued for wrongful termination, and in response the company asserted she had not acted in self-defense, but even if she did, Colorado did not recognize self-defense as a public-policy exception to at-will employment. The case went all the way up to the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled in June of this year that despite Colorado's "at-will" employment, there is a narrow exception for self-defense, and that employees "cannot be lawfully terminated for lawfully exercising self-defense in response to an unprovoked attack at work."
That decision only applies in Colorado, though, so the store clerk in Stow, Ohio may very well have worked his last shift after using a firearm to protect himself.
So far, I haven't seen any indication that Circle K has taken disciplinary action against the clerk, and I hope the company will recognize that its employee was put in an extraordinary and dangerous situation. We're talking about a group of criminals who deliberately drove a stolen van into an occupied business in the middle of the night. The clerk had no way of knowing whether they were armed, whether they intended to hurt him, or whether they were prepared to kill anyone who got in their way.
All he knew was that he was facing multiple criminals who had already demonstrated a willingness to use potentially deadly force to get what they wanted.
Does Circle K have the right to require that their employees be disarmed? I suppose so. But those policies are unconscionable, in my opinion, when they put workers at the mercy of violent criminals.
I understand why a company discourages employees from confronting shoplifters or chasing after thieves. No amount of merchandise is worth someone's life, and an employee who tries to play hero over a stolen pack of cigarettes could end up making a bad situation much worse.
Chasing a shoplifter out the door and defending yourself when a gang of thieves crashes a stolen van into your workplace aren't even remotely the same, though. At that point, the employee isn't choosing to insert himself into a dangerous situation. The danger has literally come crashing through the door.
A corporate policy that might look reasonable in a sun-filled conference room can be seen as downright idiotic from the perspective of a convenience store clerk working the midnight shift all by their lonesome. Circle K's executives may be concerned about the potential liability of allowing armed employees, but there's also a human cost to demanding that workers remain defenseless, even when confronted with a potentially deadly threat.
The Colorado Supreme Court recognized that employees shouldn't have to choose between exercising their lawful right of self-defense and keeping their jobs. Ohio courts aren't obligated to reach the same conclusion, but Circle K shouldn't need a judge to tell it that punishing someone for surviving a violent attack is an awful way to treat an employee.
I hope the clerk in Stow is back at work soon, at least if that's what he wants. After dealing with a gang of criminals crashing into his workplace, the last thing he should have to worry about is his employer coming after him next.
