On January 10, a call was placed to the officers with Constable Mark Herman's Office, summoning them to the Walmart on Kuykendahl Road. Loss prevention officers moved to intercept a breach in retail protocol, an act of procurement without remittance—shoplifting, as it is known. Deputies were informed that a woman, later identified as Margaret Fernandez, made an effort to covertly spirit away goods worth more than $170 in value by manipulating the self-checkout process—an artifice colloquially branded as "skip-scanning." And so, without the traditional exchange of currency, these items briefly lost their tether to the behemoth that is Walmart.
The woman, Fernandez by name, found herself beneath the scrutiny of the law, no longer merely a patron but now a suspect detained. The constable's office, in their narrative of the event, details how the merchandise, briefly liberated from its imposed value, was duly returned to the shelves and hooks from which it came—Walmart suffered no material loss save for the inconvenience. "Margaret Fernandez was arrested and booked into the Harris County Jail, charged with theft. Her bond was set at $100.00 out of County Court 10," declared Constable Mark Herman.
