A customer died in a Los Angeles Vons, but corporate allegedly watched on camera and ordered staff to hide the body with shopping carts and stay open

A customer died inside a Vons grocery store in Granada Hills, Los Angeles, on July 5, after suffering a medical emergency in the bakery aisle. Despite the death, store management allegedly instructed staff to keep the store open and block the body from public view using shopping carts. The incident has since drawn serious attention after a store supervisor went public with her account of what happened that evening.

Paszion Horner-Smith, a supervisor at the store, spoke to CBS LA about the incident. She said she and another employee attempted CPR on the customer after the individual collapsed. The Los Angeles Fire Department arrived shortly after 7:00 PM in response to reports of cardiac arrest.

While emergency responders were on the scene, corporate management, who were allegedly watching through the store’s surveillance cameras, contacted Horner-Smith directly. She told CBS LA, “I’m being called by someone in corporate because they’re looking at the cameras, telling me that I need to barricade the body by using carts.” According to Horner-Smith, this instruction came in place of any direction to close the store.

The deceased customer’s family spent four hours waiting at the store while shoppers continued moving around the body

The victim’s family was forced to remain at the store for four hours while waiting for a mortuary crew to arrive and transport the body. During that time, according to Horner-Smith, they were kept away from their loved one as other customers continued shopping in the area. Horner-Smith described the experience as deeply distressing. In a similar case, a Tampa H&M manager refused to let a customer check out over a refund dispute.

“They sat in the store for four hours while people continued to shop around their deceased loved one,” Horner-Smith told CBS LA. “How can anybody do that? I mean the lack of empathy is just horrible. It is horrific.” She made clear that the family’s experience during those hours was something she found deeply unacceptable.

According to The Sun, Horner-Smith, who has worked for the company for 27 years, said she had never encountered anything like this before. “It’s just something I’ve never, ever in my 27 years that I’ve worked for the company, ever encountered or dealt with,” she said. Following the incident, she took a week off work to recover from what she experienced that evening.

Beyond her personal account, Horner-Smith is calling on Vons to establish a formal, clear policy for handling deaths or serious medical emergencies in-store, so that future situations are managed with greater dignity. She believes the absence of such a policy directly contributed to how the incident unfolded, and that the company has a responsibility to do better. 

Albertsons, the parent company of Vons, reportedly did not respond to requests for comment on the matter. Similar corporate policies have recently sparked online debate, like a Costco employee filming a staff backroom to question why a billion-dollar company charges staff for food.