Houston, TX – The security guard seen standing idly by as she filmed a Houston police officer fighting for his life has been fired from her job.
“Help me!” the officer yelled to her, as the combative suspect grabbed for his duty weapon during the Monday altercation outside a Greenville gas station. “Stop f--king filming and help me!”
“Update to the story that has been making the rounds the past 2 days,” Houston Police Officer’s Union President Joe Gamaldi tweeted on Wednesday. “I contacted [the] security company that employed the security guard. They handled the issue swiftly, [and] she is no longer employed w/the company.”
“In addition, they expressed their love, support, [and] admiration for HPD officers,” Gamaldi noted.
The altercation occurred on Aug. 20, after an unnamed Houston police officer stopped a vehicle in connection with a shooting and aggravated robbery in Harris County, KPRC reported.
The driver, later identified as 17-year-old Davon Shavelle Miller, took off running from the vehicle, at which point the officer chased him and tackled him to the ground.
Cell phone footage captured the fight that ensued.
“Stop resisting!” one bystander repeatedly screamed at Miller as the officer and another man tried to get him into handcuffs.
Miller, who was lying on his back, tried to push the officer off of him and reached for the officer’s gun several times.
“Why you punch me?” he yelled at the officer during the altercation.
“Record me!” Miller told other bystanders in the area.
“Stop grabbing my cuffs! Let go of my f--king cuffs!” the officer commanded, as Miller raised his left arm with the cuffs grasped in his hand.
“Trying to kill me, son,” Miller said.
“He’s not gonna kill you,” one female bystander told Miller, seemingly more concerned about the suspect than the officer. “We all out here with cameras!”
The witness who stopped to help the officer was able to rip the handcuffs from Miller’s hand, the video showed.
A woman dressed in a security guard uniform then stepped into the camera’s view. She made no attempt to assist the officer, and instead circled around the melee, recording the scene with her cell phone.
Miller grabbed for the officer’s gun yet again, then repeatedly yelled, “I didn’t grab his gun!”
The officer then saw the uniformed woman move towards his right side.
“Stop f--king filming and help me!” he yelled, as she walked by him with her phone pointed at him just before the video ended.
On Thursday, Gamaldi confirmed that the unnamed security guard “never called the police during the entire encounter and actually got in the way of responding officers because she was too busy to recording to see what was going on.”
The security guard then left the scene without ever providing police with the video or offering to assist with their investigation, he added.
Miller was eventually subdued, arrested, and charged with felony disarming a police officer for attempting to take the officer’s weapon, Gamaldi told KPRC.
“This guy is absolutely a threat,” Gamaldi said. “He had a pistol in his car that his girlfriend actually wrapped in a towel and threw it in the bushes while our officer [was] fighting with him.”
He referred to the security guard as a “complete joke,” and said she “should be ashamed of herself,” KPRC reported.
On Wednesday, a Twitter user who identified the security guard as his grandmother blasted Gamaldi for his role in getting the woman fired from her job.
“Excuse me, first off my grandmother has not been trained for that type [of] situation and for you to call her a ‘disgrace’ is sad on your part,” Trevion Maze wrote in response to Gamaldi’s tweet. “Thanks for ruining her life. You got her fired from a company that she has been employed [with] for over 9 years.”
But another Twitter user was quick to point out that the security guard was the one responsible for her new employment status.
“If you want to claim lack of ‘training’ as a defense, she could have put down her phone…and asked the Officer what they needed or tried to help put handcuffs on the suspect,” Michael Harness wrote. “Nobody got her fired other than herself. Random civilians provided more assistance.”
After footage of the altercation went viral, public outcry prompted a judge to increase Miller’s bond from $1,000 to $50,000, Gamaldi told KHOU.
You can see video of the fight below:
