A screenshot from the video of the incident at the Canco on Ethel Street in Kelowna on Sept. 19, 2023.

Image Credit: Ty McCartney

Ty McCartney was just trying to get a sandwich when a woman accused of shoplifting from a gas station got into a fight with employees.

McCartney recorded the incident at the Canco on Ethel Street and posted it to Facebook the day it happened, Sept. 19, 2023, but he reposted it to TikTok earlier this week and it's gone viral.

The TikTok shows a woman threatening, using racial slurs and attacking gas station employees. 

Most people have only seen the version TikTok would allow on the platform which omits the first 30 seconds of McCartney’s recording.

In the full video a store employee can be seen kicking the woman, grabbing her bag, and throwing it at her back. The woman then calls for “Miguel” and starts hurling racial slurs at the staff.

McCartney said the woman was caught trying to steal a bag of candy, and a store worker intervened.

“I had to edit out the gas station guy assaulting her with her bag because TikTok wouldn't let me post it... I wasn't allowed to post that on TikTok, they kept taking the video down because it's violence,” McCartney said.

Eventually a man brings in a dog and the woman lets it off its leash. She tried to sic the dog on the workers, but it ended up jumping on McCartney.

After hurling more slurs and swinging a few punches the woman, a man and their dog leave the store.

McCartney said he waited around for 10 minutes after the incident to give the video to police, but when they didn’t arrive he had to go back to work.

“I think I stood around outside the parking lot for about maybe 10 minutes and then I had to go back to work. I left back to work and then about an hour later, a cop came and got the video from me,” he said. “The cop just straight up said that to me. He's like, ‘yeah, we'll probably never find her. She'll disappear in tent city and we'll never find her.’”

Police were called about the incident around 11:20 a.m. on Sept. 19, according to a press release from police.

Kelowna RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Michael Gauthier said they were able to locate and arrest the woman for assault the following day, but she was released shortly after on an undertaking with a court date. RCMP said no charges were forwarded at the request of the gas station employees. The issue was resolved on Oct. 30, 2023, when employees told police that the woman never returned to the store, and one victim doesn't live in B.C. anymore.

RCMP also confirmed McCartney provided the video at the time of the investigation.

“For reasons unknown, this video only recently surfaced on social media over a year after the incident was reported and investigated by police,” Gauthier said in the release. “In this particular case, when the victims of the offences are no longer interested in pursuing charges, we are obligated to cancel the Undertaking and conclude the matter as is.”

iNFOnews.ca asked the store employees in the video for a comment and they didn’t want to be named in this article. One employee said McCartney was just trying to help them by recording, but they refused to comment further.

McCartney said he used to go to that gas station all the time when he worked nearby.

“Tent city is right there,” he said. “There's a lot of drug use and whatever else. But that's probably the craziest thing I've ever encountered there by far.”

McCartney said he didn’t want to get physically involved out of concern that he would end up being charged.

“A lot of people are commenting like, 'oh, you should have helped. You should have helped.' I'm not going to get involved when it comes to a female because stuff gets taken out of context. Like if I grab her and restrain her next I'm being charged because I'm a male,” McCartney said.

When the video circulated social media commenters expressed sympathy for the dog.

“I think the dog was scared, to be honest... he looked confused and he didn't really know what to do. And he came running at me and I had to kind of like knee him to get him away from me because he was going to bite me,” McCartney said.

— This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. on Nov. 22, 2024 to add information about the suspect's arrest provided by RCMP. 

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