Colorado police officials are on the hunt for a man who was photographed in a supermarket donning what seemed like a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) hood.
According to the Dillon Police Department, they were called by a City Market store employee on Thursday after a customer was seen wearing a pointed white hood embellished with a swastika and a peace sign who declined to leave the store when ordered to.
However, the California man will not be made guilty for any criminal charges for his actions, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department declared on Monday night.
The man, who is yet to be identified by police, was witnessed wearing the pointed white KKK hood with 2 holes for his eyes on May 2 at a Vons grocery store located in Santee, California, one day after San Diego County commanded people to wear masks in public situations, including shopping in grocery stores. Store employees requested the man repeatedly to take off the hood until he eventually complied at checkout.
When social distancing is not possible, US citizens are being ordered to cover their faces in public settings to avoid contracting the infection.
The man wearing the KKK hood left the grocery store when police officers responded around 12:40 PM to complaints of trespassing, according to Police Chief Mark Heminghous.
Heminghous is seeking public assistance in tracing the man.
"Right now, they're trying to identify him, contact him and take it from there," Dillon's director of communications Kerstin Anderson affirmed.
Images and a video of the said man circulated online.
Don Nechkash captured a picture of the man, saying he was one of the several customers who confronted him and called him out as a racist.
"He was walking around and just very obviously looking for attention," Nechkash judged.
"The man expressed frustration with the coronavirus and having people tell him what he can and cannot do. He said that wearing the hood was not intended to be a racial statement. In summary, he said, 'It was a mask and it was stupid,'" according to San Diego County Sheriff's Department in a statement.
Anderson said that the police take this kind of action very seriously.
A City Market spokesperson released a statement, "At City Market, we train our associates to embrace diversity and inclusion and to show respect to every customer and one another. We ask our customers to respect these values as well when in our stores."
Immediate pressure was imposed on the police officials from groups including the local NAACP chapter to counter the incident and initiate a full investigation. But after consulting with the San Diego County District Attorney's Office and the U.S. attorney's office, the sheriff's department came to the conclusion that there was "insufficient evidence" to charge him with criminal acts.
The unidentified man remarked that wearing his hood was "not intended to be a racial statement and said he has been following the state's mandatory command to wear protective masks in places of business.
