Danger At PETCO TRIGGER WARNING
This is posted for a close friend so I can verify this is a true event:
On Mother’s Day, I was at a Petco in Westwood, Los Angeles, checking out with my dog in my arms. The cashier assisting me was a young woman in her twenties, and it was her very first day on the job. Suddenly, a terrifying man burst into the store screaming threats that he was going to “blow our heads off” and kill my dog. He was ranting, aggressive, and running around the store terrorizing customers.
Both the cashier and I were in shock. We quickly made our way to the back office to try to get to safety, but there was no functioning lock on the office door to keep the man out, and there was no landline phone available. I had accidentally left my phone in my car, and the employee was shaking so badly from fear that she could barely operate her own phone. I ended up taking the phone to call 911.
Even after explaining that we were trapped in the back of a Petco in the Westwood area with a man actively threatening to kill people, the 911 dispatcher refused to send police until we could provide an exact verified address. In a state of panic, while hearing the man moving around nearby and fearing he might reach us, we were not immediately able to locate the exact address. Once we found it and provided it, the dispatcher asked whether we had actually seen a weapon. We explained that while we had not clearly seen one, the man was behaving violently, making direct death threats, appeared mentally unstable or under the influence, and we genuinely believed the threat was real.
There were other people hiding in the back room as well, but many were too afraid to speak or call for help because they feared the man would hear them.
Eventually the man left the store, but shockingly, employees had no keys and were unable to lock the front doors to prevent him from returning. Even more disturbing, police never arrived.
This experience left me deeply shaken. I do not believe Petco had adequate safety protections in place for either customers or employees. No employee, especially someone on their first day of work, should be left without basic emergency procedures, secure locks, or a reliable way to contact emergency services during a violent threat.