Surveillance cameras captured the frightening moment when a woman was harassed and threatened by an apparent homeless man who followed her into a Subway sandwich shop, where store employees watched the incident unfold without attempting to help her.  

The incident occurred in mid-March, at around 3 p.m., at a Subway sandwich location in Culver City.  

A nurse from Long Beach, Halima Othman, said she first spotted the man outside the store on Sepulveda Boulevard, near Venice Boulevard, about a block away from a homeless encampment under the freeway overpass.  

“This man says some things to me and then he starts talking about a hitman, I owe him money, he called me Carol or something, and I was like, ‘This man is deranged,’” Othman told KTLA.  

When she went into the Subway to order food, she noticed that the man had followed her inside the store.  

“So, I’m backing up into a corner and I’m like, ‘What do you want from me? I don’t have anything for you.’ He’s calling me Carol, I owe him money, he’s going to get a hitman after me, he’s going to shoot me. His hands are behind his back. I think it’s a gun,” she explained.  

Othman said what made the situation even worse was that she begged the Subway employees to help her while she took cover behind a rack filled with chips.  

“I was begging. I was begging them and then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m probably going to die,’” she said.  

The employees can be seen on surveillance cameras watching the incident unfold as they continue making sandwiches.  

“They look at me and they don’t do anything. I’m like, ‘Please call 911, do something.’ Nothing. Then I just realized, ‘Oh, I’m on my own,’” Othman said.  

That’s when she hopped over the counter to where the employees were standing to escape the man.  

“He was reaching for me. I pushed him into the chip rack and jumped over the counter, and the employees yelled at me and told me to get out,” she said.  

The man eventually walked away as Othman was calling 911.  

“I can’t believe that they didn’t even help me,” she said of the employees. “She continued to make sandwiches. She looks up and continues to make the sandwich as if that’s more important.”

As a traveling nurse who works at LAC+USC Medical Center, Othman said she sees mentally ill people often and puts her life on the line each day to save them.  

“I usually know how to de-escalate situations, but with him there was no doing that,” she said of her attacker.  

Othman said that by telling her story, she hopes it has a ripple effect, and that people will take the opportunity to help one another.  

KTLA reached out to Subway for comment on the incident, but has yet to hear back.