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Texting Woman Who Walked Into Fountain Criticizes Mall Security

Texting Woman Who Walked Into Fountain Criticizes Mall Security

Cathy Cruz Marrero has received a lot of unwanted attention after a security camera caught the Pennsylvania woman tumbling into a decorative fountain. Marrero says she was deep in concentration writing a text message when she plunged into the water at the Berkshire Mall where she works. We told you about her story in this post yesterday.

"I saw the water coming at me, I could see the pennies and nickels at the bottom of the fountain and then I was in it," Marrero, 49, told the Reading Eagle.

The video evidence of Marrero's momentary brain lapse was posted to YouTube and has received traffic from more than 1.6 million viewers so far.

All laughing aside, Marrero says she's mortified by the incident and gets uncomfortable when talking about it.

"My issue is I don't think security was professional because they didn't send anyone to check on me until 20 minutes later and I had already left," she said Wednesday. "Instead of laughing, they should have said, 'Is she OK?' and been down there right away to check on me," she said.

Since her accident, Marrero has recruited an attorney, James M. Polyak, to "conduct an investigation into what happened."

"We are troubled by the fact that anyone at the Berkshire Mall responsible for releasing this video would find humor in an employee injured on the premises," Polyak said. "We intend to hold the appropriate persons responsible. No one from that security office came to her aid in a timely manner."

Marrero also says that texting and walking is "dangerous," adding that she never texts while driving. "It's funny, but you need to see the serious side of it," she said. "What if it was a senior citizen? Would it be funny then?" She also warns that she could have hit her head, "especially if the fountain was empty, which it sometimes is for cleaning," she added.

Marrero's husband, Walter, says he offered to jump in the fountain himself to try to make her feel better. "I wanted to do that, stand up and say, 'Hey, she's Fountain Girl and now I'm the Fountain Guy' if it would make her feel better," he said.

To add insult to injury, Marrero says the phone she dropped in the fountain worked after her fall, but was stolen over the weekend while she was at work. When she asked for video to see who left the store with her phone, security denied her request.

"It's been a bad week," she said.

Her parting advice: "Do not text and walk."

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