Cable Company Tech Arrested After Allegedly Grabbing, Shoving Customer

Cable company installation horror stories usually involve things like poorly run cords, maybe a dead gecko, gaping holes in walls, possibly having your house condemned, and the occasional tech who pees into a bag instead of in the bathroom. But a woman in Staten Island says a disagreement with her Time Warner Cable tech escalated to the point of him assaulting her in her house.

The customer tells CBS2 that when the TWC tech arrived at her home, there was confusion about whether he was supposed to service just the phone service of both phone and cable. That eventually got ironed out, but the appointment had to be rescheduled.

The woman, admittedly irritated, then asked the tech to leave and tried to read the name on his ID tag. That’s apparently when things got out of hand, according to the customer.

“He grabbed my right arm with both hands and shoved me against my front door, and he held me there for a couple seconds,” she tells CBS2. “I was screaming and yelling for him to get off me. ‘Get off me! Just get out of my house!’”

She says the incident occurred in front of her young daughter.

“I was in fear for my life and my daughter’s life,” recalls the customer. “And he’s a technician. He had his tools on him. I didn’t know if he had a weapon on him.”

The tech left after the customer said she’d call 9-1-1. She made good on this threat after he was gone and police arrested the tech only blocks from her house.

However, because the woman had no visible injuries, the tech was only charged with second-degree harassment.

Like many cable techs, the one involved in this incident is not an employee of the cable company but works for a third-party contractor hired by TWC.

TWC says the tech in question is no longer doing work for them and that the company is “working with law enforcement as they investigate what happened.”