A 5-year-old boy using a bathroom in a California Starbucks came upon a hidden cellphone with the camera rolling.
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The boy’s mother said her son had just used the bathroom at the Lancaster coffee shop Thursday morning when he gestured toward the sink and asked, “Mommy, why is there a phone under there?”
“I wouldn’t have seen it if it was not at my son’s eye level”, she explained.
In the single-person restroom, under the sink, someone had propped a phone up on a stack of paper towels.
Her son then asked her why there was a phone under the sink.
‘It had taken some work to get it to stand, ‘ she guessed, ‘so I could tell it had been placed there purposefully.’.
The outraged mother called the incident a ‘violation of privacy.’.
Horrified, the mother immediately notified employees at the Starbucks of the presence of the hidden camera, and they contacted the sheriff’s department.
Lt Joseph Fender of the Lancaster Police sheriff’s station confirmed the phone’s video had been left running and they were now investigating.
Deputies have obtained some type of surveillance video from the Starbucks but it they aren’t sure of the contents of the video at this time.
Officers say it’s not clear how long video was being recorded or where the feed was being sent.
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Starbucks spokesman Jaime Riley released a statement to KTLA about the incident, saying, “We are disturbed by this incident and take our obligation to provide a safe environment for our customers and partners (employees) very seriously”.
