Witness to mall altercation sheds light on incident

Witness to altercation at mall speaks We’re hearing tonight from a shopper who witnessed an altercation at West Edmonton Mall.

It was an incident that left Xiaobo Wu injured last Friday, after he said West Edmonton Mall security staff were too rough as they escorted him from the building – and a witness to the moments leading up to security arriving talked to CTV News about what he saw.

In late February, Wu said his wife was double-charged about $80 for a purchase at Zara in West Edmonton Mall.

Wu went to the store to ask for a refund, but the process took longer than he expected, and he ended up making a second trip there on Friday. By then, Wu said he was fed up by “terrible customer service”.

“The reason I stayed not leaving, because I stated clearly ‘I want my business to be settled’,” Wu said. “’Then I will leave’, but the moment you use force to move me, I also said I will leave.”

Eventually, store staff called security, and he was taken out.

Wu said he suffered injuries to his face and knees, alleging four security guards escorted him out of the store, into a parking lot where he was forced to the ground.

“I’m having a nightmare, is this happening to me? I just could not believe the fact I was treated like this,” Wu said.

That night, Adam Green was shopping at the store.

“They were being fairly rough with him, they had him in a headlock,” Green said. “They were saying ‘Get him to a camera’, and they kept yelling ‘Stop resisting, stop resisting’.”

Green said as soon as the incident got physical, it appeared Wu wasn’t resisting at all.

“I heard him say several times: ‘I’m not resisting, I can walk on my own power, stop pulling me around’,” Green said. “If I was being hauled around by four people I probably would, you know, try not to fall down, I think that was the extent of the non-resistance.”

Before security was called in, Green remembered hearing Wu raise his voice, clearly frustrated at the situation – but he said he wasn’t violent.

“The greatest term I can use to describe the man at the time, was defeated,” Green said. “We were browsing racks not too far away from the gentleman; I didn’t have or feel any intimidation by his presence, or any sort of violence or anything of that nature, so I was very surprised when I saw what had happened.”

Wu said he filed a complaint with Edmonton police, who he said have requested surveillance video from the mall.

West Edmonton Mall sent a statement to CTV News after a number of requests for comment; the statement said the mall was unable to speak about incidents under investigation.

With files from Shanelle Kaul