Buffalo man telling looters to “put everything back” praised as “hero”

A Buffalo, New York, man who was seen in a video urging civilians not to take items from a store amid continuing inclement weather conditions has received a chorus of praise on social media.

The video, which was posted on TikTok late Monday and was also shared on Twitter, initially looks into a store from outside. A man who is taking the video but can’t be seen in the footage directs another person attempting to exit the store with several bags of items to “put everything back.” He asks the person attempting to leave the store if he bought the items, to which he responds that he was “trying” to buy them, and the man outside the store reiterates that he needs to put all of it back.

The man inside the store complies and leaves the items inside the building before leaving empty-handed. Another person outside the store can be heard in the background identifying the store as a Family Dollar.

The man taking the video then enters the store, the front door of which appears to have been broken, and demands that everyone else who was inside the store at the time leave immediately. He encounters several people inside, one of whom offers to give the man taking the video money for the basket of items he was carrying. The man taking the video responds that nobody was working there at the moment and gets additional people to leave.

The TikTok video had received more than 93,000 views as of Tuesday morning. Newsweek was not able to immediately confirm the man’s identity, and it was not clear if he was employed by Family Dollar in any capacity.

Buffalo has been hit with a severe winter storm that brought several feet of snow and left many without power. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz announced Monday that at least 27 people had died due to the storm.

Several videos shared on Twitter in recent days have shown additional instances of alleged looting in Buffalo as locals appeared to take advantage of the severe weather conditions.

A caption on the Family Dollar TikTok video, posted by a user under the handle lifeofmissyj, explains that people have allegedly been breaking into and looting Family Dollar stores across Buffalo. Commenters on the video showered praise on the man who ordered the others to not take items from the Family Dollar seen in the video.

One TikTok user, trishlm, wrote that the man “deserves a lot of respect.”

Producer Cameron Gray, who shared the video on Twitter, wrote that the man “is the hero we didn’t know we needed.”

Newsweek reached out to a spokesperson for Dollar Tree Inc., which acquired Family Dollar in 2015, for comment.