What’s up at the Jewel? I mused as I strode by my neighborhood grocery store on the way to dinner on a cold Wednesday evening. There was commotion at the Jewel-Osco in the 3500 block of North Broadway in Lake View. A gaggle of police and fire emergency vehicles were parked, flashing lights, outside the busy store.
Gas leak? Bomb threat? Medical emergency?
This reporter didn’t stop to investigate. Too busy anticipating the delicious sushi ahead.
At that moment, a man was in the store’s security office, handcuffed, probably dead.
News reports efficiently reported the tragedy. On the evening of Nov. 20, a man tried to leave the store with goods he had not paid for, the security staff told police.
He was confronted. He became combative. Security handcuffed the man, took him to the store’s security office, and called 911.
When police arrived at the office, they “found the man slouched over a crate while handcuffed,” and unresponsive, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead.
Eugenio Escriba Guzman, 55, was a neighborhood resident, Block Club reported.
The investigation is ongoing. His cause of death had not been determined at the time of this writing.
Death is a sadly common part of urban life. But death by shoplifting?
Neighborhood resident Jacob Velasquez, 32, was shopping when he heard a disturbance. He decided to call the police, he told the Chicago Tribune.
“By the time Velasquez saw the confrontation, the man was pinned on the ground by a man wearing a Jewel uniform, who Velasquez estimated weighed about 400 pounds,” the Chicago Tribune reported.
A “police source” told the newspaper that surveillance video shows employees brought the man to the ground and handcuffed him. He was “held down for a couple of minutes.”
Velazquez said he called the police “because we’re all a community and we have to take care of each other. And I just couldn’t believe what I saw.” The Tribune quoted him as saying.
Jewel has referred questions to the Chicago Police Department.
A small band of Guzman’s neighbors are demanding answers. On Thanksgiving Eve, they protested outside the store as shoppers streamed in for their turkeys and trimmings.
They held signs, handed out fliers. “Nothing in a grocery store is worth taking a life,” Laura Grace, a co-organizer of the protest, proclaimed in a press release.
“It is ridiculous that this is going unnoticed during a time of giving, and that Jewel hasn’t even confirmed their policies or if the security guard is still working there.”
The protestors suggest Guzman may have been having a mental health episode. They ask, did he deserve the alleged rough treatment that may have led to his death?
They ask, why hasn’t the security footage been released? Why won’t Jewel identify the personnel involved, or answer other questions about the incident?
They demanded that “Jewel take responsibility for murdering (a) local man.”
That charge is unfair and premature. But it’s not overkill to question why an alleged shoplifting incident had to turn lethal.
I didn’t stop to ask.
The bright lights of a busy city can fail to expose its inhumanity.
Cities can be cold, uninterested places. We scurry around on our routine errands, heads buried in our cell phones and personal preoccupations.
Cities can also be hostile places for those who are troubled and living on the fringes.
But no one should die over stuff in a grocery store.
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