“A Taco Bell employee in Los Angeles was fatally shot Saturday night while working at the drive-thru window after refusing a customer’s counterfeit money,” NBC News reported on Monday, January 10, 2022 (read story here).
Alejandro Garcia, 41, was killed in front of his son, 19, who was also working. When a customer at the drive-up window tried to pay for food with a fake $20 bill, and Garcia refused to accept it, the suspect shot him several times, then fled in his car. Police said it wasn’t gang-related.
Kill somebody over a fast food order? Why would anyone do that? Happens all the time. A lot of people will call it senseless, but there’s always a motive. It isn’t about the amount of money involved. It’s about anger, coupled with extreme self-centeredness. And maybe the killer was already wired up over something, and Garcia was simply the person he took it out on.
So much for armchair psychology. This really happened, it’s not just a bad dream. The perp will be caught. The Taco Bell store probably has security cameras. They’ll find the car. They’ll find him. There will be a court trial, and the perp will end up dining on prison food for the rest of his life. When he so casually took Garcia’s life, he threw his own life away.
But this crime says something else about our society, too. Too many guns, too readily available to just anybody. The authors of the Second Amendment never intended this.
There is no guarantee any of that will happen. In a just world it would, but this world is not just, and crime pays. [Edited comment.]
No suspect ID’d or arrested yet, but it’s been only 24 hours, so be patient.