Home Depot has reportedly reversed its decision to fire an Oregon employee who said he was let go after chasing a man he believed was kidnapping a child.
Dillon Reagan, 32, said he was ending his shift at the Home Depot in Portland’s Mall 205 when he heard a fellow employee yelling to call the police.
“It was one of our lot associates saying, ’Hey, there is something going on, I need the phone, we need to call police,’” Mr. Reagan recalled to a local ABC affiliate.
He was told that a man had assaulted a woman in the parking lot and abducted a child from the back seat of her vehicle. Mr. Reagan said he heard the woman screaming, “Somebody help me, he’s kidnapping my kid, he’s stealing my kid!”
He then called police, who instructed him to keep an eye on the man, he said. He saw the man walking away with the child in his arms, so he and his co-worker started to follow him.
Mr. Reagan said they followed the man out of the parking lot and down the street until the police arrived. Turns out the incident was not a kidnapping, but a domestic dispute and the child was later returned to the mother, ABC reported. No charges were filed.
Mr. Reagan said he gave a statement to police and returned back to work, only to find out that he had broken Home Depot’s safety policies on leaving the store premises while on duty.
Mr. Reagan said he was fired four weeks after the May 12 incident.
“It’s kind of a catch-22 situation, I had to break the rules in order to do the right thing. I couldn’t do the wrong thing, because it was the wrong thing,” he told ABC.
“I absolutely would do it again, no changes, without hesitation,” he added.
Stephen Holmes, a spokesperson for Home Depot, said Wednesday that the company reversed its decision to terminate Mr. Reagan after further review.
“We took a second look at this and have let Mr. Reagan know that we’ve decided to reverse our decision, based on the circumstances,” he said, ABC reported. “We always do our diligence to make sure associates are treated fairly, which we’ve done in this case.”
Mr. Reagan did admit that the incident was his second offense at work in a month’s time. He said he was cited a few weeks earlier for arguing with a co-worker, but doesn’t think his trying to help a child should have warranted his firing, a local NBC affiliate reported.
He said he has no interest in returning to Home Depot and interviewed for a different job Wednesday evening.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.