An Apple employee is suing a mall and two of its security guards after a frightening incident caught on film. CBS 5 reports that the man was exiting the Westfield Valley Fair Mall parking lot when a security guard allegedly pulled a gun on him for the non-crime of accidentally running over a traffic cone.
To make matters worse, the guard was reportedly neither permitted to carry a gun nor licensed as a security guard.
This all went down in December when Nicholas Buchanan was queued in a line of cars waiting to leave the mall (there is an Apple store in the mall, but it is not clear if that is where Buchanan works). The lawsuit says that the driver in the car in front of Buchanan began to reverse, so Buchanan moved his car out of the way into another lane — running over a cone in the process. It was at this time that things are reported to have gone from standard day at the mall to terrifying.
Cellphone video shot by Buchanan from inside his vehicle (included in CBS 5's report embedded below) shows a nervous looking security guard pointing his gun right at the camera. After a few moments a man identified as the armed guard's supervisor comes by and threatens to "take out" Buchanan's car window which, perhaps intelligently, remains rolled up.
San Jose police eventually arrived on the scene (the mall is on the border of Santa Clara and San Jose) and defused the situation, but not before realizing that the armed guard wasn't properly permitted to be either armed or a guard.
Buchanan is suing both the guards, the mall, and the security company for assault, false imprisonment, negligence and emotional distress. None of those named in the suit responded to CBS 5's request for comment.
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