An Apple store in Nashua, NH is at the center of a somewhat disturbing story surrounding the tasering of a Chinese woman who wouldn’t leave the store when asked.
The woman, 44-year-old Chinese national and Newton, Mass. resident Xiaojie Li, reportedly turned up at the store last Friday to buy two iPhones. After making the purchase, Li, who says she can’t speak English, then tried to buy several more iPhones but was refused by Apple store staff, who told her a two-per-customer limit was in place.
Unhappy with this, Li started videoing other customers she claimed were being allowed to buy more than two units. Hardly surprisingly, staff told her to leave.
Over the weekend, a determined Li apparently ordered two more iPhones online, returning to the same store on Monday to collect them. Staff recognized her and refused to give her the items, and once again ordered her to leave.
When she refused, staff called the cops. Despite an officer asking her to leave, Li stayed inside the store. At this point an attempt at arrest was made but Li reportedly resisted for 15 minutes.
Taser
In a video (below) uploaded to YouTube showing part of the incident, you can see – and certainly hear – Li screaming as she’s tasered by a cop.
Having been issued with a stay-away order by the Apple store, Li was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest.
“If she left the store when she was told to leave the store, it would’ve been done at that,” Nashua police captain Bruce Hansen told WCVB TV. “She was told she was under arrest after repeatedly being told to leave the store. She didn’t submit to the arrest. The officer used the taser on her to get her to submit to the arrest.”
Resellers
With her daughter acting as interpreter, Li said she was buying the phones for relatives back in China, but according to Nashua police chief John Seusing, the store has been having trouble with visitors buying multiple devices to sell at inflated prices overseas.
Li, who was carrying $16,000 in cash when she was arrested, said through her daughter that she was trying to buy the handsets for relatives back in her home country.
Li’s boyfriend, John Hugo, said he was outraged by what had happened. “You go into a store, and you end up getting brutalized by the police,” he told WCVB TV, adding that even if she was a reseller, “does it rise to the level of getting a beating from police?”
[Small image: Stephen Coburn / Shutterstock]
“Over the weekend, a determined Li apparently ordered two more iPhones online, returning to the same store on Monday to collect them. Staff recognized her and refused to give her the items, and once again ordered her to leave.” This is the key. This staff refused to give her the items, not sell, give, because she already paid for them, the phones are hers.
If Apple allowed her to purchase 2 phones on its website and choose this store for pick-up, then she must be allowed to enter this store and pick them up. Of course she should not obey the store’s demand and leave without getting her phones. She did not attack anyone, she is defending her legal rights in a very appropriate way. This Apple store refused to fulfill an legit commercial contract, then hired a third party to assault the victim.
Buying 2 phones from Apple online store is definitely legal, carrying large amount of cash is definitely legal, and peacefully demanding the seller to fulfill a commercial contract is definitely legal. If by doing everything legal, she ended up being electrocuted, someone must have done something illegal, possibly criminal.
People cannot say that she deserve it because she resisted arresting, the cops cannot arrest people at will. It is their responsibility to investigate the situation first, then make the most appropriate decision. They cannot just use their electric gun to assault a 44 years old woman when she posts no risk to anyone or any property, let alone this action being solely based on the one-side story told by the store. Did the store staff inform the officers that this woman was there to pick up the phones that she ALREADY bought? No? That’s fine. If, as that police captain in the interview claimed, that there was no language barrier between the woman and the officers, then why the officers didn’t realize that she was there just to get her things back but the store refused to do so? Or did they know this well but went on shocking her anyways?!?! Isn’t this kind of action the very definition of police brutality?
If Ms. Li is as determined now as she was when she decided to buy the phones online and pick them up at the same store, I am sure this Apple store, and the two officers, are in for a lot of trouble.
Assuming the telling of the story in this piece is reasonably accurate, we know that the woman was asked to leave the store (rightly or wrongly) by the staff, and refused to do so. Then she was asked by a police officer to leave the store, and refused to do so. At this point she is trespassing on private property and refusing to comply with the officers. She can try to play the “language barrier” card all she likes, but once she has created a scene inside the store, refused to leave, and then refused all the officers’ verbal and non-verbal cues to leave, she is fair game for the taser.
You’ve stated here that this Apple store and the two officers are in for a lot of trouble. That much I agree with. But I would go further than that. We are all in for a lot of trouble. A pushy, aggressive, Westernized new breed of greed-headed young Chinese people have arrived on our shores with wads of cash in their pockets, prepared to buy everything that isn’t nailed down. When your new CEO at work turns out to be a Chinese dude who has just arrived here a week ago, and you are asked to take a substantial paycut and work 12 hour days, don’t come crying to me about some chick in the Apple store getting tasered, bro.
Also, at this point, the store manager and other personnel directly involved in telling her to leave, may also be guilty of theft. If she has paid for the merchandise and been informed by Apple via their website that she can pick them up at the store, the phones are her property AT THAT POINT. Not when they are physically delivered. She is legally the owner of the phones. The store personnel have violated the company’s sales contract with her.
To avoid such a charge, I’m pretty sure they would have to have a substantial claim (ie evidence other than simply her buying a number of phones) that she was engaging in illegal activity.
Sorry Joel, NO THEFT involved. See Federal Laws for why. Entire incident with the phone is Civil in nature. Became Criminal when she failed to leave. Read the State Law to see why.
Please provide reference if you are stating a law.
They are not hers when it becomes apparent that she was violating company policy and had already been told that she couldn’t buy more than 2 phones. And with 16 thousand dollars on her, that’s a lot of IPhones, Right there she got caught doing exactly what the stores policy was put in place to prevent.
Like I said somewhere, they shouldn’t have tazed here. They should have just drug her arrogant ass out by any means possible and introduced to her new friends in the holding cell. Where she belonged.
Do you think you could go to a foreign country and get away with acting like this? If you do than you really should rethink that insane idea;
She’s a scammer. Hope that she gets a nice sentence.
If the store did not refund her money then they are guilt of theft. Police did not appear to care about that.
And we don’t know if they did or not. I’m sure they did. They wanted her gone.
WRONG – they don’t have to let her in to pick up anything. She intentionally violated their policy and the store can always reverse her purchse charges. It’s a CIVIL matter anyway. She has no right to stay in their place of business. She can take it up in court CIVILLY if she is not refunded her money. If they tell her to leave and she refuses, it is tresspassing – a CRIMINAL offense and she is arrestable by the police end of story. If she resists arrests then that is a separate criminal offense. The tasing was resonable force in effecting that arrest. No one is “in trouble” but the Chinese woman.
And let me add, it said she “ordered” the phones online not paid for them yet.
When you order on line they ask for your name, address phone number,,credit card, credit card number, expiration date, security code, e-mail address so they can send you confirmation of the order, billing address if different from home, and do you have any coupons for this order.after this has all been done and the figures have been added up, then you may place the order for pick-up.If the credit card is rejected, so is the order. So when she went to pick -up her order, those phones were her’s, bought and paid for.. The police chose to just listen to the merchants side of the story and not get the whole picture.And in doing so, he violated her rights just as much as he would have violated yours or mine. The store is wrong in provoking him to do this by depriving her of her rightful property. If they wanted it backafter selling it to her, it was up to them to go to cout to sue for it, rather than get high fisted about it. Now it is REALLY going to cost them..
As per federal law: a company may not charge your credit card if you order online, until that order is shipped, or is picked up at a store you designate. Since the phones were never in her possession, her card was never charged.
If she spoke no English, how did she manage to use Apple’s American website. She could not use a foreign ( Chinese ) website and have the phones picked up out of country. If she was buying them as gifts, she could have put each phone in the recipients name to be picked up. She was re- selling, plain and simple, and probably spoke and understood English very well.
Of course her boyfriend will say she was beaten – he’s hoping for the money tree to lose some leaves.
Gyrene, As with Joel, she only entered into a CIVIL contract for a purchase. C I V I L Law will tell you why. Please read it.
They were under no obligation to turn over those phones. None at all. Not after they discovered her ‘deception’ in the sneaky way she ordered them. And if she didn’t want to cause trouble, she would have picked them up at ANOTHER store. I bet there’s more than one in town.
sorry if this is a repost. she was told to leave the store, she left the store, went home and ordered two phones to be delivered to the store from whcih she was told to leave, they recognized her and told her to leave again, she refused. the cops were called, they attempted to arrest her, she resisted arrest for 15 minutes…at that point, she got tased…she did not get tased for being in the store…it helps to read and/or comprehend the story you’re commenting on
the STORE HAS TWO ITEMS THAT BELONGS TO HER THAT SHE ORDERED. AND WHEN YOU ORDER ON LINE YOU PAY ON LINE. THE STORE IS THIEVES. EVERYONE INVOLVED SHOULD BE ARRESTED FOR THEFT AND DUTILY CHARGED AND ARRESTED. NOW DOES THEIR POLICY SAY TWO IPHONES A YEAR?? A MONTH?? IF NOT THEN ITS NOT CLEARLY STATED THEN. YOU BUY TWO TODAY COME BACK TOMORROW, ITS A DIFFERENT DAY THEN
Hey Justice, READ THE LAW.
Sorry, but you’re flat out wrong. The store staff isn’t guilty of theft. Perhaps, a more careful review of the laws concerning this matter would have kept you from making a full of yourself.
When you are asked to leave a store, or business (most stores or businesses have the right to refuse services to anyone) and you don’t leave, you have committed criminal trespassing. The last time I checked, criminal trespassing is against the law. When you break the law, you get arrested. When you fail to comply with lawful police orders, police are authorized to use whatever force necessary to control the situation. In this case a tazer was necessary. So yes, she got what she deserved! People should know the law before the readily and stupidly attack police actions.
The store is under no obligation to do anything. They have the right to refuse service to whom ever they choose. When they asked her to leave, she should have left and went to another store. Who they sell and do not sell to, is their business. They can choose not to sell to you, for any reason they see fit. It can be for something as simple as, they didn’t like the way you looked. They are under NO obligation to sell their goods to a customer. Seems to me she wanted to start trouble by not leaving peacefully when asked.
She should never have ordered the goods online and went back to the same store she was just asked to leave. She should have picked these up from another store .
IS THAT WHAT IT SAYS ON LINE?? YOU BETTER CHECK THE POLICIES OF THE COMPANY THEN. WHEN YOU PURCHASE SOMETHING AND IT ASKS YOU WHERE YOU WANT TO PICK IT UP, THEN THAT LOCATION IS UNDER CONTRACT BY THAT AGREEMENT ON LINE. GET YOUR FACTS BUDDY
Don’t you just love armchair lawyers airing their knowledge of the law? Had she been in ‘my’ store and not the Apple Store, she would have been ‘politely escorted’ to the door and told ‘in no uncertain manner,’ not to come back – or else.. The fact is…she was asked to leave the store by BOTH the staff AND the police. She didn’t, so she got what she deserved the stupid, arrogant woman. As for not speaking English. Bull****! When you are in a foreign country then you should obey their rules. If someone had done what she did, in China, I shudder to think of the consequences. When in Rome etc etc.
‘or else’ what? beat an old lady in ‘your’ store see if you don’t go to jail tough guy
Since when is 44 “old.”
She was told to leave. She knew that she was not going to be sold more than 2 phones. She went offsite and bought two more after she was told no. And her arrogance in showing up in person AT THE SAME STORE to pick them up was just a F*** YOU to the people who had been having to tolerate her bad behavior the day before. And no where does it say that she wouldn’t get her money back. You’re just making things up now.
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This Apple store refused to fulfill an legit commercial contract, then hired a third party to assault the victim.
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Who, pray tell, did they hire to assault her? One – assault is the ‘apprehension of an immediate harmful or offensive bodily contact’. That’s assault. Two – battery is the bodily contact. Get your crimes straight.
I guess she should not have been tazered. They should have drug her out by her hair instead I guess, And Failure to Leave is a criminal offense. Not a biggie, but it is illegal. And there wasn’t too much to investigate. They told her to leave. She was still there. That constitutes Failure to Leave.
I have not one ounce of pity for this creature. Generally I do when the cops taze someone, but this wretch was looking to start something.
The police were clearly in the right here. Apple store customers deserve to be tased.
Bet she understood the universal language of …..ELECTRICITY!!!!!
LMAO!!!!
That was funny! You are correct, 2000 volts doesn’t need an interpreter.
So the fact that she was carrying 16000 cash on her does make her pretty damn suspcious. Let me say that again to remind you of how much that is SIXTEEN THOUSAND dollars in CASH.
Also..the second time she came with an interpreter..it was clear that she could understand what the cops and the store was ordering her to do.
Mabye she should have not been so stupid.
She’s a scammer. Buying phones and selling them for a profit. Exactly what the Apple is trying to prevent people from doing.
So what are you talking about, her participating in Capitalism or Apple Attempting to circumvent the anti-trust act by monopolizing a market? Either way she was acting as an American in America! It’s the American Way!
if this is the American way and how we Americans are supposed to act….we are all Doomed!!!!
Americans get to go in and tell companies what they are going to do and sell and to who? Even if it’s against their policy and they’ve already said no?
Right.
THEN MAYBE APPLE SHOULDNT HAVE AN ON LINE STORE
Maybe she should learn English? We do live in ‘merica?
sounds to me like she was trying to abuse the system. or thought she was above the rules.
Ah, the magnificent sound of a pushy, annoying Chinese woman shrieking as she is tasered. A woman who is smart enough to try to game the system and buy up all the iPhones, but claims to be unable to understand English. Is there any more beautiful sound in the world? I certainly can’t think of one at the moment.
I am a pretty little blond who bought 10 I phones and was never asked to stop buying them. No-limit was told to me. I paid by cash also and is it wrong now to buy anything in cash? What is wrong with this country when you are down graded to useing cash? I buy almost everything in cash except my house payment. Plus because you come from somewhere else in this world you should speak theres? Damn I guest all of you better not fly anywhere outside your own state! Biggets on here.
Danielle, not only do you not know what a bigot is, but you don’t even know how to spell the word. BTW, I would be willing to bet there is some sort of connection between your being a “pretty little blond” and your dealing only in cash. Please do provide us with more details. Sounds interesting.
Damn it Hammond those attacks on her spelling where not called for and hurtful. Everyone is not good at spelling. She could be a math genius for all you know, or could have been posting from a phone which is hard!
Shrew you Hammond. You are one little blip away from being flagged with your slimey innuendos.
Whaddanass you are.
10 phones huh? You’re a liar.
Stupid reply. I have bout up to four phones with no problem. A very white, mature male.
YOU LIMP DICK QUEER. YOU DONT KNOW IF SHE IS LYING. SICK BASTARD
I didn’t buy it either.
Glad you stand up for people like you do. Your boyfriend is a lucky guy.
Judging from your exemplary command of the English language, spelling and grammar, it’s not surprising you are ‘a pretty little blond’ [sic] Look it up sweetie!
Let her go back to China and try resisting arrest; tasing will likely be the least of her worries. These people come to a country where they have freedom and immediately try to take advantage and push the boundaries. I have no sympathy for her or her boyfriend whatsoever.
Has anyone checked her immigration status? Most people think of mexican when you say illegal alien, however there are hundreds of thousands of illegal chinese in the country.
If you act like a Dick in public, You deserve what you get, She was told more than once she could only buy two phones. They also asked her more than once to leave the store. She is just another arrogant foreigner that thinks she is better than anyone else.
Tasers are now used pretty routinely to get “submission” to an arrest if someone is resistant. Pepper spray is also used increasingly in this way. Both of these cause pain and would be described as torture, if done for instance, to assist an interrogation. My sense is we have become confused between convenience and necessity. Our laws should support the notion that pain-inducing agents are permissible only if necessary, and not if merely convenient. I believe the latter excuse is becoming more culturally accepted, and should be challenged.
She deserved what she got, buying Apple crap. Next time buy Microsoft!
This woman is a moron and deserved to be tasered. After being informed that there was a purchase limit she then went online to purchase and scheduled pick up at the SAME store that told her about the rule. This was also after she videotaped other customers without their permission while claiming they were purchasing more than two. She went back to that store to start crap. Don’t pick fights you can’t win, morons. LOL
Diana, you show the intolerance of the standard level of intelligence individual. To be able to say someone ‘deserved’ being tasered, I’d suggest you ask the police to give it to you once so you can really understand what you’re talking about.
Why? Diana wasn’t the one who broke the law.
The fool who got herself tazed was.
You missed the point, entirely. Perhaps you’d like to get taswered once, just so you know what kind of idiocy you spout?
Why is this newsworthy?
Best comment yet
the hell with apple why cant she buy 2 thousand phones apple has no right to say you cant buy more then 2 what do you do when you have 5 family members you cant buy 5 phones with the hell does apple care if she resells them people have a right to resell anything they want she should buy samsung i hope apple goes broke i just got rid of my apple iphone it was the worst pice of junk i ever had
Another jealous Apple Basher. Back to the trailer sonny and make do with second best.
“Don’t Tase me Round Eye”
“I no see blake lights”
This woman’s behavior led to her being tasered. Nothing more, nothing less.
Hey, when a store tells you to leave, then you leave. No sympathy for Ms. Li – in this country you have no right to trespass on private property. She obviously had no respect for the store’s rules or their right to eject her from the store and she certainly had no repsect for the police. She should be in jail.
shame on apple !
shame on the police!!
shame on us for accepting such force from our government!!!
WHO GIVES A RATS ASS IF SHE’S GOING TO GO BACK TO CHINA AND SELL THEM FOR A PROFIT. MOST LIKELY THE DAMN IPHONES WERE MADE IN CHINA, SO WHO’S MAKING MONEY OFF OF WHO’S ASS….
Apple cares. And it’s their store and it’s their product and it’s their policy.
No one, foreign born or born in this country can go into any business and demand that they make special exemptions for them. Not you. Not me. Not Ms. Chinese National.
Cops need to earn their pay and stop the use of the taser in cases such as these! They should only physically remove the customer from inside the store to the outside as they are not hired to uphold the laws of Apple-land; they are hired to uphold the laws of the United States and local government! The next thing in store for these lazy fat cops is a “Beck and Call” donut service in case they need extra energy to hold the taser over their fat bellies while they apply it to the female shoppers! It is between Apple and her if she wants to enjoy any further visits.. must have made her feel “right at home” to get a load of our chinese gestapo tactics we apply to customers of our biggest capitalistic pigs.. Apple (Steve Jobs) did leave us with the RFID chip technology that will be imposed upon us by Obamacare!
YOU SAID. SO TRUE. WE NEED TO GET SOME GOOD COPS NOT THESE LAZY ASS SO CALLED ONES. DOES IT MAKE YOU WONDER WHY THE PIG UNIONS DON’T WANT THEIR OINKERS DRUG TESTED, WELL THATS HOW IT IS WITH OUT PIG DEPARTMENT
I am wondering about the competence of the police officers who were unable to remove a small woman from a facility without using a taser. Seriously, do they even have to physically for the job these days?
I’ve got to admit, Apple workers often show favoritism to their friends or (paying) special customers. Seen it time and again at stores. This is just one of the arrogant actions shown by Apple and their staff…and a reason I don’t buy their stuff anymore. I haven’t actively encouraged my friends to stay away from these products again, but from now on, you bet I will!
That alone will cost them BIG BUCKS…I am sure your two friends already have Iphones though.
Well, when I get that second friend, you bet I will let ‘em know! ;-)
Gotta have a sensa humour, ya know.
Oh my. Apple’s doomed for sure now.
typical Nashua porkers. can’t get an old lady to do what you want, fry her. punks
The Wall Street Journal.com-Breaking news has a very interesting article about this lady’s countrymen who work at the Apple factory in Shenzhen, China.
Here’s the link:
http://allthingsd.com/20121218/foxconn-workers-say-keep-our-overtime/?KEYWORDS=foxconn+workers
It amazes me how some people can be so racist…so misinformed…
Having experiences the arrogance of the Apple Store ‘Geniuses’, I’m not surprised they treated this woman like this. I don’t doubt they were selling more than 2 phones to other people, so she was right in her accusations and they should have just sold her the phones.
If she ordered phones later, why was she denied the sale? Apple must be doing so well they don’t need more business. They certainly will not get more from me. I would still buy an Apple phone, but will only do it via Best Buy or another retailer. I will not set foot in an Apple store again.
I just love the cops, deadly force doled out wherever and whenever they see fit. I say “deadly,” because of all the unfortunate deaths resulting from police use of stun guns. I guess we’re subject to the death penalty merely for being a nuisance these days. If she had died that same cop would stand there and shrug his shoulders, as if to say she got what she deserved. Of course she was pretty big for the two men to handle…yeah they needed to tase her because their lives were in danger lol! I wonder if the people would be so agreeable to this, if their own mother was the one with a taser up her a$#, simply for making a consumer complaint in the store. In fact I used to work in a store and I dealt with lots of obnoxious customers that deserved tasing…I should have called the cops lol!
They can’t refuse service to someone because they speculate suspicious activity, which it was clearly just about race. If that woman recorded other people buying more than one phone, it was not against their policy to buy more than two phones. The people making comments defending the security obviously aren’t reading the whole article, or their just racist. Go ahead and say I’m “playing the race card”, because there is no other way to describe it.
Yeah, racism is now defined as not agreeing that someone from another country can come here and demand special treatment from a company even if told that it is against company policy.
And nowhere does it say she recorded people buying more than two phones. SHE said that she was recording people buying two phones, She said. Apparently that wasn’t true or I think the article would have included the information that she could prove it with video to back it up. And any private company can refuse to serve ANYONE if they cause a problem, which this arrogant wretch certainly did.
I love all the armchair lawyer posts. What bothers me is why so much time was allowed to elapse between the command “Leave the store now” and her being TASED. Oh yes, and the state of Massachusetts should start investigating her tax evasion.
If the iPhones are selling for inflated prices overseas then Apple is not properly serving that overseas market. There should never be a limit on what a person should be able to purchase unless it actually HURTS someone else. Paying too much for a smartphone…umm…I don’t think qualifies.