SunTrust Bank Throws Away Food As Hopeful, Hungry People Are Forced To Watch [Report]

In a story that has yet to be picked up by major national media outlets, SunTrust bank reportedly threw away tons of edible food while hungry residents watched in horror after the foreclosure of a supermarket and subsequent failure of a food bank to pick up the perfectly edible items.

The late March incident has begun to gain traction on the web as well as outrage toward SunTrust bank for their actions on the day of the Laney Supermarket eviction. [Update: There is a petition urging SunTrust to apologize for the Laney Supermarket eviction, calling on the bank to make amends for their actions.]

Dozens of reportedly hungry families hoping to receive some of the food removed from the Laney Supermarket and destined for a landfill had to be dispersed by police and even restrained as the tons of food were taken away to be destroyed.

In the clip below from Fox54, local resident Robertstine Lambert lamented during the Laney Supermarket evacuation:

“People got children out here that are hungry, thirsty… Why throw it away when you could be issuing it out?”

The Centre For Research On Globalization reports of SunTrust’s eviction of the supermarket’s owners:

“The bank ordered the food to be loaded into dumpsters and hauled to a landfill instead of distributed. The people that gathered had to be restrained by police as they saw perfectly good food destroyed. Local Sheriff Richard Roundtree told the news ‘a potential for a riot was extremely high.’ ”

According to their coverage of the SunTrust eviction of Laney Supermarket, the bank is “trying to confuse the issue and not take direct responsibility for their actions,” and SunTrust media rep. Mike McCoy is quoted as simply saying:

“We are working with store suppliers as well as law enforcement to dispose of the remaining contents of the store and secure the building.”

While the SunTrust eviction of Laney Supermarket has not proven a big news story, over on Twitter, users are raging as videos circulate of the hungry onlookers forced to watch as the food is destroyed — and as seen above, Wikipedia users have been attempting to edit SunTrust’s page to report the controversy.

Below are three clips depicting the Laney Supermarket eviction by SunTrust. Do you think it should be illegal to destroy edible food at a time when one in seven Americans is considered food insecure?