OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
74-year-old Mary Moreno says was fired from her job at a Circle-K convenience store after her manager didn’t believe her story about an armed suspect who robbed the store.
She worked at the store for 16 years and was reportedly well-liked by customers.
Police later arrested suspect Tyler Darren Wimmer in connection with the robbery. He pled guilty to aggravated robbery and menacing with a deadly weapon.
Now a lawsuit has been filed on Moreno’s behalf by the Rathod Mohamedbhi Law Firm. “I’m not doing it for money,” she explained. “I’m doing it because of the way they treat their employees.”
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Moreno says that the manager treated her badly. She was regularly forced to work alone without breaks, which put her in danger.
The robbery occurred during a night shift at the store on Oct. 4, 2020, when a man came in around 7 p.m. holding what she described as two hunting knives.
“I was shaking so bad that I couldn’t hold myself still,” she said. “I was just wanting to get him out of there.”
“He kept insisting, ‘You have to give them to me.’ He said, ‘You have to give them to me,'” she said.
“I pushed his arm, you know?” Moreno explained. “And when I pushed his arm, he took off.”
But Moreno told KCNC trouble was only beginning.
She told the station that despite video of the incident, eyewitness accounts, and Wimmer’s arrest, her store manager didn’t believe her story.
“He took me in the office, and he said, ‘Well, I don’t see a knife,’ because he watched the video, I guess,” Moreno recounted to KCNC. “And I said, ‘Well, there was a knife.'”
Moreno’s boss even insisted that she apologize, the station said, after which she refused and then was fired.
