Some would call this a case of “no good deed goes unpunished.” A former Walmart employee says he was fired for helping an assaulted woman.
Kristopher Oswald, a 30-year-old employee of the Hartland, Mich., Walmart, said he was taking his lunch break in his car when he heard a nearby ruckus in the parking lot.
Oswald said a woman was screaming and he saw a man on the hood of her car.
"She's screaming. He jumped off the car. He pushed her against the car," Oswald told Detroit TV station WXYZ.
When he went to intervene, Oswald said the man began to attack him and threatened to kill him. After subduing the attacker, Oswald told WWMT two other men jumped in and began to beat him.
Walmart isn’t disputing the story. The company has a policy against workplace violence, and a Walmart rep told reporters Oswald violated that policy.
But Oswald says — shouldn’t the fact he was helping a customer mean anything?
"I will always do the right thing... even after all of this," Oswald told WRIC.
Patch spoke with Oswald, who told the outlet he never intended for it to get physical — that he'd hoped a verbal intervention would be enough to help the woman he perceived had been in trouble.
A Walmart rep called it "a tough decision" and said the company "understood Oswald's intentions." Still, Oswald is out of a job. According to WXYZ, Oswald only began working for Walmart about seven weeks ago and would not have been considered a permanent hire until a 180-day probation period ended.
—Newsy.com contributed to this article
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