Death of elderly Home Depot worker who tried to stop robbery sparks outrage: 'Where are the reparations?'
There has been more concern given to criminals than victims as of late, critics say.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The death of an elderly Home Depot employee who succumbed to injuries he suffered while trying to stop a robbery – and search for an elusive suspect – have shined another glaring light on the rise of lawlessness nationwide and raised one question: What about reparations for crime victims?
"Where are reparations for victims?" Fox News host Greg Gutfeld asked Tuesday after discussing the death of 83-year-old Home Depot worker Gary Rasor on "The Five."
Surveillance video released by the Hillsborough Police Department appears to show the suspect shoving Rasor on Oct. 18 and hurrying out of the store while allegedly stealing three Ryobi pressure washers. Rasor was reportedly never able to walk again and died Dec. 1 after a lengthy hospital stay. The suspect was described as a 6-foot Black male who fled in a white Hyundai with North Carolina temporary tags, according to Law & Crime.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We are heartbroken by the loss of our associate Gary. He was part of our team for more than 9 years. He was an amazing friend, husband, father and grandfather, always willing to help anyone," a spokesperson for Home Depot told Fox News Digital in a statement.
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Meanwhile, in North Philadelphia, a gas station owner has hired heavily-armed security to protect his property from thieves, loiterers and criminal activity occurring in the vicinity, as Pennsylvania's largest city deals with a sky-high crime rate and progressive prosecutorial discretion under Democratic District Attorney Lawrence Krasner.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}On "The Five," Gutfeld said the trend toward lax criminal justice policies is often touted as a way to make up for past oppression of enslaved people and oppression of other minorities.
"[T]hat caused us to change all of these policies: No cash bail, reduced sentences. Where are the reparations?" he asked. "It doesn't even matter the color of the skin for the criminal -- where the reparations for the victims that were killed, attacked, raped by people that were let out based on the assumption that all of these rules were racist or oppressive based on 400 years of persecution. That's an interesting lawsuit."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Gutfeld questioned what the public dynamic would be like if Rasor had survived and the perpetrator was killed.
"He [would be called] a vigilante [because] this person was a victim of an oppressed society," he said, adding that Rasor's death instead received "barely a peep."
"There is a message there and that message is contagious, Rob these places until they move out. This is a slow-roll looting operation. They don't care if these buildings, these places leave – they don't care about the people that are suffering," he argued.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Gutfeld called both situations in North Carolina and Pennsylvania a "metaphorical snapshot" of the past two years, where there is no fear of repercussions because if a criminal is punished, often times the prosecution is tarred as "racist."
"We're still living in that post-Ferguson era where we allowed the media, and we allowed activists to tell us that law enforcement is permanently stained," he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Co-host Jesse Watters further added that in North Carolina, people essentially have a "license to steal" under the current law with which thefts under $1,000 result in misdemeanor charges.
Co-host Dana Perino later added that Rasor was from the generation that "did something" when they saw something wrong, while the following generation was the "see something, say something generation" – and the current generation "pretend[s] they don't see it."