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GRANADA HILLS, California (KCAL, KCBS) — Workers at a Granada Hills Vons said their managers kept the grocery store open for hours with a customer’s dead body lying in an aisle.
Paszion Horner-Smith said she was working as a supervisor on July 5 when one of her customers suffered a medical emergency in the supermarket’s bakery aisle.
“It’s just something I’ve never, ever in my 27 years that I’ve worked for the company, ever encountered or dealt with,” she said.
Horner-Smith and another employee performed CPR, but the customer died.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said crews were called to the store just after 7 p.m. that night for a report of a cardiac arrest.
Horner-Smith said her corporate managers told her to cover the body with carts and umbrellas while the store remained open.
“I’m being called by someone in corporate because they’re looking at the cameras, telling me that I need to barricade the body by using carts,” she said.
Horner-Smith said the customer’s family stayed at the store for four hours until a mortuary removed their loved one from the store.
“This poor family that’s just sitting there,” Horner-Smith said. “They can’t even see their loved one. They can’t touch their loved one. They sat in the store for four hours while people continued to shop around their deceased loved one.”
UFCW Local 770 President Kathy Finn said she contacted the Albertson’s labor relations department after learning about the incident. She said the company has not responded to her questions about protocols for handling a customer’s death in the store. The union urged the company to review its emergency policies.
“This situation is just one incident of that kind of callous attitude towards the needs of the workers,” Finn said.
Horner-Smith said she’s taking a week off to recover from the incident.
“Vons, you need to do better,” she said. “You need to have some sort of policy for when someone passes away in the store. This should not have happened.”
Albertsons, the parent company of Vons, did not immediately respond to CBS LA for comment.
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