Police have found a missing 19-year-old Kwik Shop clerk after she was kidnapped early Monday morning, said the report. Police said Keith Van Elson Jr., 54, of Cedar Rapids, is in custody with charges pending. Amanda Daniel went missing early Monday morning after a delivery driver noticed there was not a clerk on duty and called police. Police pulled the surveillance video and saw a white [image-nocss] male enter the store and force Daniel out with a knife.
Cedar Rapids has a law that says stores with only one employee working the overnight shift must install a surveillance camera, the repot said, and the Kwik Shop did have a working camera, which helped police catch the suspect.
Many of the other c-stores in the Cedar Rapids area close before midnight. Managers said staying open all night just wouldn't make them enough money and could also put their employees in danger. Clerks told KCRG-TV they always pay attention to who goes in and out of their stores and they react to each dangerous situation differently.
"If it's just a matter of you giving them the money and then they leave, that's one thing. But, if it's someone who wants to harm you, you have to be a little more aggressive and defend yourself," Ann Trenor, a clerk at Market Express, told the news outlet.
Many stores have panic buttons inside they can press if they feel unsafe, the report said. Others can also press a button to automatically lock the doors if they want to keep a suspicious person out.
Jeff Parker, president of Hutchinson, Kansas-based Kwik Shop, told KCRG-TV that the company will review its policies in the aftermath of Monday's kidnapping and assault on an employee in Cedar Rapids. "We're looking into it internally to address any safety concerns that we would uncover here," said Parker. "On an ongoing basis, we conduct training for our associates on security issues. We encourage them to pay close attention to customers and their surroundings in the store at all times. After a situation like this, we most definitely will look at what we have in place today and review whether it's something we need to revise."
He added, "We are really grateful that the police were able to find her as quick as they did. We're trying to get in contact with her family to offer any help and support that we can."
"This is a very unusual situation for us," he said. "When we look at safety for employees or our customers, we take it very seriously."
C-stores do not often schedule female clerks to work graveyard shifts alone because robbers and other criminals think they make easier targets, a security consultant told the news outlet.
The circumstances of the abduction were unusual, according to Chris McGoey, a Los Angeles security consultant and author who has consulted on security plans for 7-Eleven and other retail chains. He said it is quite common for c-stores to operate with one clerk Having a woman clerk operating a store alone late at night is far less common, McGoey said.
"Probably 90% of the people who work these shifts are male," McGoey told KCRG-TV.
He added that sexual assault also becomes a much greater likelihood when women work stores alone late at night.
Some states and cities have laws requiring more than one employee for c-stores open overnight. In New Mexico, c-stores open between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. must either have two workers on duty, have a security guard or install bulletproof glass and other safety features to limit access to store personnel, according to the report.
Still, McGoey said, women clerks sometimes are scheduled to work alone late at night for various reasons, and women don't always object. "Sometimes women work the graveyard shift just because they don't have any other options."
Kwik Shop is one of five c-store chains owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger Co.
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