A Panorama City movie theater employee says a routine request to leave outside drinks in the car turned into a brutal beating Tuesday night, leaving her with a missing fingernail, momentary blindness and a deep fear of going back to work. Ruby Arcos de la Cruz says she was simply doing her job when a female customer and her boyfriend attacked her inside the Regency Theatre on Van Nuys Boulevard.
The confrontation began when the customer tried to bring four beverage cans into the venue, according to ABC7. The customer was told she could not bring outside drinks inside and was asked to put the cans back in her car, the station reports. What followed, Arcos de la Cruz says, was two rounds of being struck in the face by the customer, leaving her nose hurting.
Arcos de la Cruz says she fought back after being attacked, but the situation escalated further when the customer's boyfriend got involved. He allegedly shoved her to the ground and slammed the back of her head into a wall, causing her vision to go dark. “My vision went black for a few seconds,” she said, describing the moment her head struck the wall, per the same ABC7 account. Managers on duty tried to pull the customer and her boyfriend off of her, the report notes.
A Security Guard on Break, Employees Left to Enforce the Rules
A security guard does work at the theater a few days a week, but he happened to be on break when the altercation broke out Tuesday night, the station's report states. That left the job of checking bags and enforcing the no-outside-drinks policy to regular theater employees like Arcos de la Cruz — a responsibility she says came with pressure. Employees had been told just the day before that there would be consequences if they didn't check customers' bags, according to the same account.
Video of the attack is now part of a Los Angeles Police Department investigation, the outlet reports, and LAPD is searching for the two people involved in the altercation. Theater management had not responded to a request for comment from Eyewitness News as of the station's report.
Emergency Room Visit Cut Short, Fingernail Removed at Urgent Care
Arcos de la Cruz went to the emergency room Tuesday night but left after learning her health insurance had expired, per the same ABC7 account. She later sought treatment Wednesday at an urgent care center, where one of her fingernails was removed. She said she still had the removed fingernail with her in her boyfriend's car, the station reports.
She says she had hoped her employer would help her navigate getting treatment, but instead felt abandoned after engaging with a manager. She said she had thought the company had her back and had to navigate the process by herself, according to the same report. Despite everything, she says quitting isn't an option because she needs the paycheck — even though she's now nervous about returning to work.
Broader Questions About Retail Worker Safety
The incident lands amid a string of similar confrontations at movie theaters elsewhere in the country. A woman at a Miami-area cinema said a man attacked her with a pizza pan after he was annoyed by her laughter, an incident that left her injured and hospitalized, according to WSVN 7News. In Connecticut, a security officer at a Wallingford movie theater suffered cuts to the head after confronting a moviegoer who was allegedly smoking on the property, with police arresting a man in that case, per WFSB.
California regulators have been paying closer attention to this category of workplace danger. The state's Department of Industrial Relations defines what it calls Type 2 violence as workplace violence directed at employees by customers, clients, patients, students, inmates or visitors, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations. Separate state guidance states that workplace violence events include four major types, and that a given workplace may be subject to more than one type, while recommending that every employer perform an initial assessment to identify workplace security issues.
For now, the Regency Theatre attack remains under LAPD investigation, with the two people involved still being sought. Video footage shows the attack, while Arcos de la Cruz has described her experience in an interview. She remains injured and uncertain about facing the public again after the dispute over the drinks.
