"They were even stealing yesterday" during the store's recent liquidation sales.

On January 23, a female entered the Walmart on Fletcher Parkway and packed her shopping cart with different products, according to the El Cajon Police Department. Around 6 pm that Tuesday, the woman pushed the cart outside the big-box store without paying and loaded the stolen merchandise into what witnesses said was a white-colored Nissan Sentra driven by a female accomplice. By the time the police  arrived at the Walmart parking lot, which the Parkway Plaza mall patrons shared, he two suspects — Lex Smith, 28, and Elaine Bouis-Medrano, 29 — were gone. But they weren't too far.

Mike Vasquez, who frequents the Walmart in Grossmont Center. "Every time I go to Walmart, there's always a police unit outside."

The two drove around the mall, parked, and entered the Aldi grocery store at about 6:30 pm. "One woman filled a shopping cart with merchandise and left the store without paying," reads the police report. "The female punched an employee who tried to stop the theft, causing minor injury." The accomplice exited the grocery store and "staged" the getaway vehicle closer to the 67 freeway onramp.

The El Cajon Police officers "quickly arrived and detained the women, and found their vehicle loaded with stolen merchandise," continues the police report. "The women were identified as being involved in both incidents" mentioned above and "were booked into Las Colinas Detention Facility on felony charges."

"Good for them thieves!" exclaimed Mike Vasquez, who lives in La Mesa and frequents the Walmart in Grossmont Center. "Every time I go to Walmart, there's always a police unit outside. Honestly, I think the self-checkout stands are easy marks for the thieves."  

"Self-checkout accounted for just under 30 percent of total transactions in 2022," Grabango, a checkout technology company, said in a CSPdailynews piece. "Based on a market size of nearly $1 trillion and a partial shrink rate of 3.5 percent, self-checkout machines cost food retailers more than $10 billion in lost profits annually."

There are many self-checkout stands at local Walmarts.

In 2023, Walmart closed 24 big-box stores around the U.S. due to underperformance in sales and theft as the reasons for mass closures — according to www.dcourier.com. "These stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years," explained a spokesperson from Walmart in the article.

And the Walmart closings continue into the new year here in San Diego County. The Walmart Neighborhood Market on Imperial Avenue and 21st is shutting down. And the Walmart on Fletcher Parkway in El Cajon — the same one mentioned above — is  closing up shop.  

And even with the stores blowing out products at discounted prices, the thievery continued. "They were even stealing yesterday," said Salvador Gudino during the store's recent liquidation sales. "The neighborhood is getting worse every day here." Vance Smith, who lives in the Sherman Heights area, agreed; he continued, "Most of the thefts were from the homeless and the immigrants that hang out around the area. Seen it too many times. [They] just walk in and take what they want and walk out past security and sell what was stolen."