A fight on South Beach spilled into the street a Collins Avenue and 9th Street Sunday, after a store manager chased and fought three alleged shoplifters.
“He thought that they were a little suspicious,” said Mourad Chaabi, a store employee.
Chaabi had been working inside the Beach Outlet store and said an employee got suspicious of three women who walked into the store.
“He stood there next to them, just watching, you know, if there’s something, anything suspicious,” said Chaabi.
One of the women noticed the owner was keeping watch. “She told him, ‘Hey, why you watching me like that,” said Chaabi.
At that point, Chaabi said the women started walking toward the door and then stopped.
“She was really mad and said, ‘Oh you want to watch me? So watch me now.’ And she started grabbing sweaters and they just ran away,” said Chaabi.
Local
Surveillance video from a hotel across the street shows the employee catching up to the women, one of them falling. The owner grabs a sweater as another woman comes up and swings at him. Her friend then joined in, before they all ran away.
"I stopped them on the street, I said please just give me my stuff," said Rafael Kalderon, the store's manager. "I don't want to call the police and they go around me and they start to throw the punches."
“The guy was just trying to get his stuff back,” said Chaabi.
Miami Beach Police say the store didn’t want to open an investigation into the shoplifting incident and therefore are not currently trying to find the women seen in the video.
"In the last year, it's happened a lot," said Kalderon.
“It’s just $30. You could’ve just bought that, you know? Why would you just take it?” said Chaabi.
Police followed up with the store Wednesday morning to confirm that it didn’t want to press charges. The owner said no.
