HOMESTEAD, Pa. — Cellphone video shows a tense argument between Homestead’s Chief of Police, Jeff Desimone, and a pregnant woman who was waiting at the Giant Eagle pharmacy drive-thru in the Waterfront.
In the video, you can hear Desimone, who is parked behind the woman, yelling at her to move her car from the drive-thru window because it was taking too long to get her prescription.
At one point, the chief calls other officers, who showed up at the Giant Eagle.
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We heard from both from the woman involved and the police chief. The woman says she was harassed and intimidated. The chief says the whole thing is being blown out of proportion.
He was in an unmarked truck, and wasn’t wearing a uniform.
Kahmahlai Stewart didn’t catch the police lights on her cellphone, but eventually started recording the encounter while several months pregnant, with a sick child in the back seat.
She says the clerk originally told her the prescription would be a few minutes, but ended up taking longer, and she continued to wait at the window.
After Stewart refused to move for the chief to get his prescription, the video shows that he continued to yell at her and the employees, then called other officers to the drive-thru.
“It was absolutely unnecessary stress for myself, my unborn child. At the time he was balling up, I had my 5-year-old in the back. He’s coughing,” explained Stewart.
Channel 11 talked to the chief by phone today, who called this incident a “little dispute”, and that it was being blown out of proportion. He says all he wanted was for Stewart to pull over and wait, so he could pull up and get his prescription.
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“Who are you to tell me to tell me I need to move? (To) go back around and get behind you, and wait again when I was here first? For you to pull up and turn your lights on and intimidate me, that’s unacceptable,” explained Stewart.
Stewart told us she has an attorney who is reviewing the video. She is also asking for the chief to step down and at the very least, an apology.
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