'Biased' investigation | Fire brigade technician unfairly sacked after Tesco shoulder barge incident, tribunal rules

A London Fire Brigade employee was unfairly dismissed after being accused of shoulder barging a woman to the ground in a Tesco queue, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Hydrant technician Ryan Shearwood was summarily dismissed for gross misconduct in April 2023 following the altercation at Tesco Pinner Green, but a judge found the dismissal process was tainted by bias and procedural flaws. The tribunal concluded the complaint of unfair dismissal was well-founded and that Mr Shearwood was unfairly dismissed.

The Tesco incident

The case centred on an incident in October 2022 when a shopper reported to the London Fire Brigade that Shearwood, who was off-duty but driving a brigade vehicle, had assaulted her in a self-checkout queue.

In her email complaint, the woman alleged: “I had been waiting in the scan as you shop area… As I was standing there in a different part of where the self checkout queue was, I saw an elderly man, so I let him go and then I walked through after him, and that's when this man… walked up to self checkout till and said that I pushed in the queue. I told him that I didn't and tried to explain the situation to him (that a staff member told me to wait and then go ahead and weigh my item there), but he refused to listen and when I placed my purse and item on the scale he shoved me to the ground.”