A 79-year-old man in Florida is accused of using a firearm to terrorize a Walmart worker he felt had shown a “bad attitude”.
Pascual Santana, born in May 1946, was arrested on Friday and charged with armed assault after allegedly threatening a jewelry section attendant from the seat of his mobility scooter, court records show.
A Miami-Dade County sheriff said that Santana had repeatedly “spoken aggressively” to the woman and “called her derogatory names” before opening his shirt to reveal a handgun and asking: “Are you scared now?”
Santana has pleaded not guilty to the charge and has demanded a trial by jury.
According to an arrest record seen by The Independent, Santana rolled into the Walmart at 5851 NW 177 St in the city of Hialeah, part of the Miami metro area, at around 10:50 a.m. on November 16 last year.
Stopping at the jewelry section, he asked to see multiple pieces of jewelry, but was told that store policy only allowed him to view one at a time.
At this, a sheriff’s deputy wrote, “the defendant became upset because he felt that the victim was not providing good service to him. He began to speak aggressively to the victim, and began to call her derogatory names.”
The worker repeatedly explained the store policy, but Santana allegedly refused to accept it. “[He] told her that she had a bad attitude and that she needed to fix it,” the deputy said.
Then, the document alleges, Santana “opened his shirt, in which he had a firearm in his waistband, and stated to the victim: ‘Are you scared now?'”
The victim was indeed scared and fled to get help from store security. Several months later, deputies arrested Santana, who apparently insisted that the person seen threatening the worker in surveillance footage was some other armed 79-year-old.
Court records show that Santana applied for and received “indigent status” and was assigned a public defender.
He is now in jail on a $5,000 bond with no court dates yet listed.
