him go. he actually could have fell unconscious or he could have been, you know, dead. august 7th, 2010. shoppers and tourists pack the hollywood walk of fame. college student joshua fountain is waiting for a friend at the bus stop when alejandro and his brother pablo walk outside of the forever 21 store with stolen t-shirts stuffed in alejandro s bag. when he left, the security guard approached him, but he did not hear him and then he started to walk off. and that s when the security guard just jumped on him and tackled him. started hearing a bit of a ruckus behind me and two individuals fall to the ground. i brought up my phone and decided to just record it. as the struggle plays out right in front of him, it quickly becomes clear to joshua that there is a reason alejandro
didn t hear the security guard. right away i knew he was deaf and he was trying to let the security guard know he was deaf. but the security guard who now has alejandro in a head lock still doesn t appear to notice. alejandro s brother pablo desperately tries to get the guard s attention, but it s difficult because pablo, too, is deaf. pablo is running around yelling and it s unfortunate that deaf people don t articulate their voices as well as hearing people. what you hear is a lot of gut real primatal screams. you can hear the pain in their voices. you could feel the pain in their voices even though they can t articulate what they re saying. you can hear what they re feeling, there is a panic there. pablo is unable to help his brother. another security guard that was lulling him out to intervene into the situation.
he s choking him right here. hes he turning purple. the most shocking part of the video to me was when alejandro started turning purple because that s when you knew it was serious and he could have passed out, and the frustrating part about it is was he couldn t communicate to the guy to stop, even though he was trying to communicate with him. you could see alex in the video clearly motioning with his hand to the security guard, i m taping out, kind of like the universal sign that all guys know when they wrestle with their dads and everything, when you re pinned and you re giving up. bystanders start to gather as alejandro struggles to get out from under the security guard s grasp. the crowd was fairly big. there were at least 100 of us watching. after almost two minutes, one witness attempts to step in, but he is held back by a third security guard. nobody else steps in to help.
he posts the video online and calls local news stations. within a couple days that the video was up, it already received hundreds of thousands of views. thanks to joshua s video, alejandro has a claim of his own. the civil lawsuit is for the damages they caused him by using excessive force. the guard is never charged, but he loses his job with forever 21, and the store settles with the brothers for an undisclosed sum. we didn t even end up having to sue. that s rare in corporate america where they actually stand up and be honest from the get-go and say, yes, we did make a mistake and we re going do what we need to to do correct it. you re choking him right here. no charges are brought against pablo. as for the criminal case against alejandro, he pleads no contest to one count of petty theft and serves 120 days in county jail. alejandro started it and he was clearly in the wrong, but
he somewhat seemed helpless and he wanted someone else to go ahead and help him, but there was nothing that you could do. people here in los angeles know that you kind of just stay out of things. the security guard didn t have a badge on and didn t have a uniform, it could have been two rival gangs going at each other. i imagine some of the bystanders thought that this was some reality show or something. you turn to you tend to get blah say out here when you see somebody like that because you re thinking, oh, it s probably somebody filming this or one of those practical joke shows or something like that. eventually they pick ed alejandro up, he got up. they quit choking him and then they took him back into the store that s when the video stopped because the person taking the video wasn t allowed to go into the store and follow. although he felt helpless while alejandro was in the choke hold, joshua uses the power of his video to help.