A 77-year-old man is dead after the parents of a teenage Walmart employee beat him inside a Norfolk, Virginia, store — all because he told their daughter she nearly ran over his wife with a shopping cart. If a man cannot tell a teenager to watch where she's pushing a heavy cart without being ambushed, shoved, punched, and kicked to death in the middle of a grocery store, then the basic contract of public life is broken.
Bert Atienza and his wife Josephine, married 42 years, were grocery shopping after church on June 7 when a 17-year-old Walmart employee came barreling down the aisle and nearly struck Josephine with her cart. Atienza told the girl she almost hit his wife and didn't even apologize. That's it. That was the offense that cost him his life.
The teen then threw a can at the couple as they walked away and called her parents for backup, according to Josephine's account to WTKR. Minutes later, Travis White, 44, and Erika Mitchell, 42, were in the store hunting the elderly couple down. Surveillance video shows Atienza standing at a shelf, looking at merchandise, when White and Mitchell attacked him from behind — shoving, grabbing, and punching him while their daughter watched. He was pushed into a shelving unit and collapsed. One of the suspects then kicked him on the ground.
Josephine begged them to stop. "My husband has heart problems," she pleaded. They didn't. "While he's on the floor, they're still kicking him and I told them stop," Josephine said. Bystanders walked away.
Atienza was still conscious briefly. "Help me get up," he told his wife. "No, you're bleeding. Your mouth is bleeding. Ambulance is coming," she replied. Then he lost consciousness. He died the next day from blunt force trauma. Medical officials ruled it a homicide.
White and Mitchell were arrested days later and are being held without bond. Their daughter was charged with assault and battery, aggravated malicious wounding, and conspiracy to commit a felony, and is being held at the Norfolk juvenile detention center. The Post reported that charges against the parents were later upgraded to second-degree murder.
Their attorney, James Broccoletti, is already spinning. He told WTKR the parents were just defending their daughter, that it was spontaneous, not premeditated. "They did not go there, intending for any of this to happen. It was an emotional situation. Their daughter called them. She was distraught." The Guardian omitted the defense claims entirely; the Post included them. But the video speaks for itself — two grown adults ambushing a 77-year-old man from behind and kicking him while he's down is not protection. It's a mob beating in a grocery store.
A man who went to church that morning with his wife is dead because he asked a teenager to be careful with a shopping cart. The people who should have stepped in walked the other way. The lawyer is already laying the groundwork to call it an accident. A civilization that cannot protect its elderly in a Walmart aisle — or even summon the decency to intervene when one is being kicked on the ground — has lost more than restraint. It has lost its soul.
