A video posted online shows a group of young men brazenly stealing power tools from a Home Depot store in Maplewood, Minn.
“I look over and I see a group of young guys and didn’t think anything of it but then I heard a big crash a few seconds later,” the man who took the video, Jason Gerner, told Alpha News. “Then I realized, ‘Oh they’re stealing.'”
The video, posted to Facebook, was recorded on Nov. 22, 2024 and has been viewed over three million times. It shows two young men grabbing Milwaukee power tools from the shelves of the Home Depot and attempting to rip off security tags and locking devices.
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Gerner can be heard asking the men in the video. They didn’t respond and continued to remove the power tools from the shelf. The video is nearly a minute and a half in length and no one, other than Gerner, attempted to intervene during the portion that was recorded.
Gerner said he and his wife were at Home Depot to get Christmas lights and were shocked to see the young men blatantly stealing out in the open.
“I grabbed my phone and walked over and asked them what they were doing. I got my camera out to start recording. There was a third person, but by the time I started recording he was already gone,” Gerner said.
He explained that his wife saw them leave the store, but by the time she got her phone out they were already too far away to identify.
“I asked the employees about loss prevention since it seemed odd to me that no one tried to stop them,” Gerner said. “It was around 6:30 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. The employees told me that loss prevention goes home at 5:00 p.m.”
He explained that employees said they are instructed not to intervene in these situations and are told to just call the police or loss prevention.
Gerner said he doesn’t believe the men were caught. “Even if they got the license plate and make of the vehicle, there’s not much that could be done, it was probably even a stolen car,” Gerner said. “They know that nothing is ever going to happen to them.”
Maplewood police said they were “unable to locate a case” related to the incident. Alpha News reached out to Home Depot for comment but did not receive a response.
Hayley Feland
Hayley Feland previously worked as a journalist with The Minnesota Sun, The Wisconsin Daily Star, and The College Fix. She is a Minnesota native with a passion for politics and journalism.
