Outrage over LA supermarket’s despicable act after shopper dropped dead in bakery aisle

A Southern California supermarket is facing backlash after keeping its doors open for hours with a dead shopper lying in the bakery aisle — even asking workers to block the body with shopping carts.

The shocking incident unfolded July 5 at a Vons in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Granada Hills, where a customer died inside the store. Rather than closing, management continued serving shoppers as the body remained in the store for hours, CBS LA reported.

Employee Paszion Horner-Smith — who was working as a supervisor when the customer suffered a medical emergency — got choked up when recalling the incident.

“How can anybody do that,” Horner-Smith told CBS LA. “I mean the lack of empathy is just horrible. It is horrific.”

She and another employee tried to give the person CPR, but it was too late. 

Horner-Smith said she then got a call from her managers at corporate who saw the body in a surveillance video and was told they needed to block the body with shopping carts.

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“I’m being called by someone in corporate because they’re looking at the cameras, telling me that I need to barricade the body by using carts,” she recounted.

The grim scene dragged on for four hours as the victim’s grieving family was forced to wait inside the store for mortuary workers to arrive, according to Horner-Smith.

“Poor family that’s just sitting there. They can’t even see their loved one,” Smith said.

“They can’t touch their loved one. They sat in the store for four hours while people continued to shop around their deceased loved one.”

A spokesperson for Vons parent company, Albertson’s, said it was “saddened by this tragic situation, and our thoughts are with the individual’s family and loved ones.”

“Our team contacted emergency responders and supported first responders as they attended to the medical emergency, as well as local police who remained present,” the company said in a statement to The California Post.

“We work closely with emergency responders and law enforcement to evaluate each situation based on the circumstances present.

The company said that out of respect for deceased and their family, no further details would be shared.