SAN DIEGO – Video posted to Facebook of a security guard outside a Southern California shopping mall insulting a pan-handling woman carrying an infant is causing an uproar.
The cellphone video captured by a passerby at San Diego's College Grove Shopping Center shows the guard on a golf cart. He tells the woman, “You're illegally here, you're having babies and you're probably on welfare.”
Sonia Serrano posted the video. She was shopping with her 10-year-old daughter and recorded the altercation after she heard the guard ask about the woman’s immigration papers, according to KSWB.
The video shows the guard telling Serrano to mind her own business, and then they get into an argument.
“I’m gonna defend her! She has a baby!” Serrano can be heard saying. The guard accuses the woman of being part of a "scam" involving other people.
"She's got a husband in the car and lives in a condo," the guard says.
Serrano tells him, " All you have to do is call the cops."
At that point, another woman gets involved, and from there the situation quickly turned into a name-calling and shouting match.
Serrano said she recorded the event because she didn’t like the way the guard was treating the woman.
“I didn’t care that she was asking for money, I cared about the way he was approaching her,” she told KSWB.
The video was viewed nearly 800,000 times and shared more than 16,000 times on Facebook.
Allied Universal, the company that employs the security guard, issued a statement saying the guard does not represent the standard they set for their employees, and they are “handling” the situation.
