Publix should have warned customers about woman with a gun outside store, jury rules

Employees of a Lake Worth Beach Publix had a duty to warn its customers in the summer of 2020 that a woman who had just left the store was outside, carrying a gun and threatening to kill people, a jury decided this week.

The woman, Renata Gloria Ray, was convicted of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and sentenced to eight years in prison last year, but the victim of the shooting, Tocka Hardaway, 62, of Greenacres, sued Publix, arguing that she never would have left the store if she had known someone with a gun was outside acting erratically .

“It was the least they could have done,” said Peter Dyson, one of Hardaway’s lawyers.

Several store employees knew that Ray, 66, was outside the store with a gun, but no one made an announcement, locked the doors or warned customers that t