A disquieting incident at a Taco Bell in Los Angeles, California, has recently achieved virality, generating great outrage and debate over the behavior of security guards and the treatment of their customers. Filmed on Super Bowl Sunday, the footage allegedly shows a male security guard slapping a female customer with full force after she refused to leave the restaurant. A shocking incident at a Taco Bell in Los Angeles has gone viral after a security guard was caught on camera brutally slapping a female customer who refused to leave the restaurant.
The Altercation
‘A security guard at a Taco Bell in downtown Los Angeles was filmed slapping a woman inside the restaurant on February 9. Witness Alejandro Sanchez, 29, said the woman was ordering food when the guard told her to leave before suddenly striking her.’
– SWNS pic.twitter.com/eYl4AiEyGy
— The Daily Sneed™ (@Tr00peRR) February 13, 2025
The footage was captured by Alejandro Sanchez. It opens with the woman walking inside the Taco Bell location while the security guard orders her to leave. However, rather than leaving, she simply walks over to the self-service kiosk to order.
The video then shows the security guard approaching her before proceeding to slap her across the face, seemingly without a moment’s hesitation. The slap, an unbelievable smack that must have stunned everyone who saw it, rang through the restaurant.
“They were just telling her to leave, and she didn’t want to leave because she was ordering. Then he just went off, and she started going crazy,” Sanchez told SWNS.
After being slapped, the woman starts bending backward, clutching her face in apparent shock, and walking toward the other end of the restaurant, but the security guard keeps following her as they exchange insults. He eventually throws her out of the premises.
Eyewitness Account & Reactions
For his part, Alejandro Sanchez, a frequent patron of that particular Taco Bell, offered a separate perspective on the incident, stating that the restaurant is located a few blocks from Skid Row, an area generally represented as having a large number of homeless fellows.
“So there’s a Skid Row a couple of blocks away from there, and they just have a lot of traffic,” Sanchez said, suggesting that perhaps the guard thought that the woman was homeless.
While Sanchez noted that the shocking altercation was caught on tape, he also found one thing that struck him as odd: the workers at Taco Bell paid more attention to preventing him from videotaping the incident than they did on stopping it from happening.
“The employees were just trying to stop me from filming rather than dealing with the situation,” he said.
Public Outrage & Online Debate
Many criticisms appeared online after this viral video:
– The excessiveness of the force by security
– Public treatment of the homeless
– Is the security guard justified?
– Taco Bell’s stand on the matter
The majority of the comments on social media claim that actions by the security guard were “unacceptable” and “brutal,” but at the same time, they claim that there might be a bigger picture that was not captured in the footage.
What Next?
As of now, Taco Bell has not made any comments related to the incident. It is not known whether any further legal action will be brought against the security guard in question or if the woman in the videotape would file charges against the security guard.
But now that the video has gone viral, the public is demanding that Taco Bell respond and clarify their policies regarding the treatment of customers and security procedures.
Concerns about excessive force in public places continue to snowball, and this sad incident is a reminder of the pressing need for holding those in security accountable, initiating proper security training, and treating every person decently with dignity and respect, irrespective of their backgrounds.
