Video footage of the incident for which St. Louis, Missouri, Starbucks employees were fired for fighting off would-be robbers in 2023 has been released.
Michael Harris told Fox 2 he was working the drive-thru when the two individuals walked into the store, the outlet reported Thursday.
One of the suspects shoved a female employee onto the floor before demanding the workers give them money. The video footage showed one of the would-be robbers hit Harris in the back of the head with a gun, causing him to kneel on the ground behind the register.
“After that point, my vision went black. I was like, I’m about to get shot,” Harris recalled, adding “It was definitely a life-or-death situation.”
Another employee noticed a gun one of the suspects was holding was fake when its trigger broke off as the individual hit a coworker with it.
That was the moment the employees began fighting off the pair of would-be robbers. The four were seen brawling in the store’s cafe area.
The suspects were later sentenced to prison, but Harris said Starbucks fired him. His attorney, Ryan Krupp, told the outlet, “You have the right to self-preservation. You have the right to make sure that you and your family to [sic] not be physically harmed – full stop.”
“All it’s going to do is dissuade people potentially from protecting their own lives when they may need it the most. And that is not a world that we can live in,” he added.
The St. Louis incident was not the first time employees were fired after trying to stop criminals from targeting their stores.
In 2023, a grocery store employee was fired for filming three men stealing $500 worth of items from a King Soopers in Centennial, Colorado, and three workers at an Academy Sports + Outdoors store in Louisiana reportedly lost their jobs for trying to stop a shoplifter who fled with a gun, according to Breitbart News.
Starbucks told Fox this week regarding the St. Louis incident:
In high-stress situations like this, our priority is ensuring the safety of everyone in our stores. We were deeply disturbed by this frightening incident and are grateful that our partners and customers were not more seriously injured at the time.
Our training and protocols are designed to support partner safety by emphasizing de-escalation, helping to reduce the risk of an already volatile situation intensifying. All partners are trained at hire and annually on these practices, including robbery scenarios that reinforce complying with demands and avoiding actions that could increase risk.
In 2015, the Utah Supreme Court ruled the right of self-defense outweighed employer-mandated “de-escalation policies,” according to Breitbart News:
The decision came in a case revolving around a 2011 incident in which “six workers were fired after they fought with a shoplifter who pulled a gun on them inside the Layton Wal-Mart.”
According to Fox 13, when Walmart defended its actions, Utah Supreme Court Justice Christine Durham asked if employers should be able to fire employees “for refusing to take a bullet for the company?”
Regarding crime in St. Louis, former Team USA figure skater Gabrielle Linehan was allegedly gunned down by a career criminal while waiting in a Starbucks drive-thru in February 2026, Breitbart News reported.
“Fifty-eight-year-old Keith Lamon Brown was arrested the following day. He has a criminal record dating back to 1986, including a felony conviction,” the article said.
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