A New Orleans convenience store has attracted criticism after a former employee slapped a parking boot on an ambulance while it was helping a man inside.
WWL-TV reported that local police identified the employee as Ahmed Sidi Aleywa, who put the boot on the vehicle while paramedics were attending to a customer inside Quickie's Convenience Store on Nov. 30, despite the ambulance's emergency lights being on.
"We actually had to delay that patient's care by calling another ambulance out here to come transport this patient," a local EMS spokesperson said.
While store owners refused to comment on the incident, another employee, Ali Colone, told the station Aleywa was fired.
"The guy that did this, he came from another country," said Colone. "He didn't even know what an ambulance looked like."
But while Colone also said the store continues to enforce its aggressive customers-only parking policy, which warns that anyone who leaves the property will have boots attached to their tires, a local private investigator, Akesha Allen, has come forward to complain about Quicky's practices.
Allen said her vehicle was booted by an unidentified employee while she was still inside during a stop there in September, allegedly for not paying a $5 parking fee.
"I said, 'What are you doing? I'm not illegally parked,'" Allen said. "He goes, 'Yes you are, You didn't pay the fee.' I said, 'I never got out of the van to pay the fee.'"
Her employer, Mark Avery, called Quicky's rules into question, since the store charges $115 to remove the boot -- $25 more than the city limit -- and charged Allen an extra $5 on top of that. And the company listed as being responsible for securing the vehicles told the station it wasn't affiliated with the store.
"It doesn't pass the sniff test, does it?" Avery said.
Wach WWL's report on Quicky's questionable parking policy, aired Monday, below.
