A couple of years ago, TikToker Ryan (@bruhbruhbruh7669) was falsely accused and detained for stealing $900 worth of sunglasses at a store in San Jose, California.
One day, he and his friend decided to go to the store and check out the sunglasses. He noticed that the employees were giving him weird looks, but he thought it was just because he was only browsing and not buying anything.
After he and his friend left the store, he saw out of the corner of his eye that a bunch of the staff and security were slowly surrounding them.
Ryan made a few turns to get them off his trail, but they continued following him. He tried to step into another store, but an officer grabbed him and told him to show his ID.
“I don’t even know what I’m being accused of, and then they just put me in handcuffs, and then they told me I was being detained,” said Ryan.
“And then, they were talking about how I stole $900 worth of sunglasses yesterday or the day before. I was just very confused because I was in a completely different city the other day.”
Ryan told the authorities to check his phone, which proved that he wasn’t in the city when the theft occurred. However, they didn’t listen to him and escorted him to a police car. They told him that one of the store employees had identified him as the thief.
When they pulled up the security footage, Ryan could see an Asian guy wearing Balenciaga track runners stealing stuff. The guy was also wearing a mask, so his face was covered.
“You can’t see his face, by the way,” said Ryan. “He was wearing a mask, so I was just like, you genuinely cannot confidently say that this was me. You don’t even know what this guy looks like.”
It took about two hours of Ryan being in the police car for them to finally check his phone and look at the evidence he had been talking about.
That was when they revealed that none of the store employees who identified him as the culprit were even present when the theft occurred.
“They just straight up accused me, probably because I just fit the height and I’m Asian,” said Ryan.
“Again, they don’t know what that person looked like because they had a mask on, and I also don’t really get the height part because Balenciaga track runners make you pretty tall. It has a good two to three inches. So, these employees just looked at me and were like, yeah, this is the guy.”
An employee who was actually working during the crime clocked in for his shift, took one look at Ryan, and immediately dismissed him, saying that he was not the thief.
The police officers apologized for the mixup and let him go. Ryan was still angry because this two- to three-hour ordeal could have been solved in 10 minutes if they had just checked his phone right away.
The next day, Ryan called the store and told them that they owed him an apology for falsely accusing him of stealing, which ruined his whole day. All they did was provide him with the phone number for their higher-ups.
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By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
