A wannabe lawmaker running on platforms of anti-crime and aiding small businesses has been accused of shoplifting – by a hardware store owner who has footage of the alleged theft.
A candidate for Seattle’s Federal Way City Council, Denise Yun is seen pulling hammers from a shelf at Trinity Ace Hardware on Pacific Highway South in the footage, which was filmed July 18.
In the clip, Yun – a relatively unproven political newcomer who has pleaded guilty to stealing twice in the past – is seen knocking over store signage as she puts the hammers on top of her purse.
Moments later, as she pushes her cart away, the camera appears to show the the 58-yea-old Democrat placing the hammers in her purse – before leaving after being confronted by the outraged owner.
Now in the hands of a city prosecutor, the footage has spurred a police investigation, as well as a statement from Yun denying the video’s legitimacy.
In it, the Democrat – who works as a nurse – claims it was purposely edited ahead of the city’s upcoming election to hurt her chances, and that it shows her storming out not because she was confronted, but because she was met with a racist remark from the store owner. She has since vowed to move ahead with her campaign.
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A wannabe lawmaker running on platforms of anti-crime and aiding small businesses has been accused of shoplifting – by a hardware store owner who has footage of the alleged theft
A candidate for Seattle’s Federal Way City Council, Democrat Denise Yun, 58, has denied any wrongdoing – claiming she stormed out of the store not after being confronted, but after being met with an off-color remark from the store’s owner
However, the owner of the store – who is seen producing a hammer near Yun’s purse in the somewhat grainy footage – insists otherwise.
‘I reached into her purse and pulled out a hammer,’ Nick Rose, one of the local business owners Yun has repeatedly promised to protect from vandalism and theft, told KTTH’s Jason Rantz, the author of the forthcoming book What’s Killing America, earlier in the week.
‘It was one of my hammers that had a little ACE tag hanging on it,’ he recalled, adding that he confronted the aspiring politician after another employee allegedly spotted her snag one of the tools.
‘It was a ball peen hammer, so I just grabbed it,’ he said, narrating the footage Yun now claims he spliced.
He said the encounter seen in the clip – which has yet to yield a concrete charge against the potential congresswoman – occurred when he approached the woman to ask if she had anything in her purse that she shouldn’t.
At the time, he recalled, her shopping cart was full of wooden stakes for campaign signs – something he only put together after the fact after performing a reverse lookup on the woman’s phone-number, which she provided to another employee.
The purse he claims had been hiding the three ball peens was placed in the top basket.
‘She ended up coming towards the cashier, and I wanted to see if I could look in her purse to see if there was anything – if I could see anything.’ the owner continued, adding the other staffer on the floor radioed him to notify him of his suspicions.
‘And I did see a small sliver,’ he remembered – before going on to claim that Yun, a licensed nurse from South Korea, seemed to shy away at this point.
‘She kind of had her hand on her purse,’ he said, two weeks after members of the Federal Way Police Department said they had finished analyzing the footage Rose had sent them, and that their findings had been sent to city prosecutors.
‘It was a very large purse,’ he remarked. ‘And there was a small sliver, that I can see a shiny wooden hammer or a handle.’
After producing one of the hammers – an act that cannot be explicitly made out in the footage – Rose said Yun became irate and stormed out.
He went on to hand over a full copy of the recording to several news outlets and the city’s police force, claiming it constitutes proof that not only is Yun a thief, but a hypocrite as well.
In the clip, Yun – a relatively unproven political newcomer who has pleaded guilty to stealing twice in the past – is seen knocking over store signage as she puts the hammers on top of her purse.
Moments later, as she pushes her cart away, the camera appears to show the the 58-yea-old Democrat placing the hammers in her purse – before leaving after being confronted by the outraged owner
‘She said she wants to protect the small business from vandalism and theft, and she turns around and does the same thing?’ Rose said, referencing a particular passage on Yun’s campaign website,
Found on the site’s homepage, it reads, ‘In this post-covid economy, small businesses need to be able to focus on surviving and thriving, not worrying about vandalism and theft.’
Another passage adds: ‘Denise will ensure our families will be safe from crime and advocate for quality education and police officers.’
Also found on the site is language touts Yun’s journey from an eight-year-old Korean immigrant to a licensed nurse in the 70s and 80s and her current work as a nurse at a local firm called Harstene Consulting.
More recently, amid the growing scrutiny surrounding the recent allegations, a statement was also added to the webpage, in which Yun addresses Rose’s allegations with her own narrative of what transpired.
Rose, meanwhile, said that after his story was reported, Yun returned to his store days later and attempted to give him $200 in cash as a ‘donation.’
Yun’s online explanation, though, insisted otherwise – suggesting Rose’s claims were politically motivated and not based in reality.
‘I reached into her purse and pulled out a hammer,’ Nick Rose, one of the local business owners Yun has repeatedly promised to protect from vandalism and theft, told KTTH’s Jason Rantz earlier in the week, after handing the footage over to cops and now city prosecutors
The incident took place at Rose’s Trinity Ace Hardware on Pacific Highway South on July 18, and has since sparked a city investigation
‘At Ace Hardware Store on Pacific Hwy I had stopped there to price how much wooden stakes cost because my campaign signs had arrived,’ the statement read.
‘A young gentlemen helped with the different size stakes and loaded all of them in my shopping cart.
‘The Store Manager Nick was behind us the entire time and knew I was running for office and suggested I should buy hammers to place the signs on the ground.
‘He released a video that was edited to show people a one sided story. This incident of his statement of trying to ruin my campaign by alleging I stole merchandise from his store is untrue.’
‘Not only that,’ it continued, ‘his goal of branding me a thief by contacting the local media with the video edited and not showing the full version of me in the store that would have exonerated me has caused exactly what he wanted.
‘For people to not vote for me and vote for my opponent. This is what it’s like to campaign in the eyes of a Trump Republican.’
The statement from Yun went on to claim that she only stormed out after being subjected to an off-color remark by Rose when she went to pay.
Yun, meanwhile, has maintained her innocence – suggesting Rose’s claims are politically motivated and not based in reality
Yun is running for city council on platforms of anti-crime and aiding small businesses has been accused of shoplifting, a statement on her website shows
‘When I arrived to pay for all the merchandise in the cart he said to me: “How many Koreans gave you 100 of dollars in cash to run for office in Korea Town?”
‘I was angry and hurt by his comment and left the store, left all the merchandise in the shopping cart.
‘I hope people understand that there are two sides to a story and I am not stupid enough to steal anything while running for office and had given the employee my phone number when they had more wooden stakes.’
The statement, which surfaced sometime after local cops finished their probe late last month, came after multiple outlets reported that Yun was planning to drop out of the race as a result of the incident.
Her announcement has since stated otherwise – making it clear she plans to still appear on the Democrat ballot come November, and still intends to win.
Endorsed by several figures including Washington AG Bob Ferguson despite her inexperience, past instances of shoplifting that have since surfaced could hurt her chances – even if a charge in this current case has yet to stick.
She was first accused of stealing in Bellevue, a 2001 police report shows, after making off with roughly $1,451 worth of merchandise from a local Nordstrom.
That said, it’s not the first time she been accused of shoplifting – pleading guilty to stealing nearly $1,500 of goods from a Bellevue Nordstrom in 2001, police reports show, and again two years later for another incident at the Bon Marche mall in Tacoma in 2003
In that instance – to which Yun pleaded guilty – loss prevention staff saw the then nurse enter fitting rooms with a Nordstrom bag and merchandise, but when she exited, the items were nowhere to be seen.
After being detained and admitting to the theft, Yun consented to a search of her bag, which turned up the missing goods.
After confessing, she was convicted of attempted second-degree theft, a charge that has a max sentence of a year in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Still, just three years later, Yun found herself on the wrong side of the law again when she was caught stealing again at the Bon Marche mall in Tacoma in 2003, resulting in her nursing license license suspended by the state Nursing Commission for 15 years after pleading guilty to, once again, second-degree theft
However, her license was reinstated in 2018 – a maneuver made without any further restrictions – and the conviction was vacated in 2020, meaning that in the eyes of the law, Yun never committed a crime in that case.
As for the current case, the city confirmed last weeks has been received, but charges had not been filed as of Sunday.
City Administrator Brian Davis said in an email that the City of Federal Way has given the case to the City of Kent to avoid any charges of bias – especially ahead of her faceoff with Republican incumbent and former Deputy Mayor Linda Kochmar.
For now, prosecutors are still pouring over the footage provided by Rose to see if there is anything to his claims.
In a warning aired to KIRO 7, the store owner said that even if that’s not the case, Yun is not welcome back.
“I have to send a message, it’s not easy to steal from my store. Don’t come back.
‘I will go after you,”
Yun, meanwhile, reiterated on her website the fact that she has yet to charged with any crime.
She said: ‘I look forward to the day when all the facts of this incident are in full view and I will be vindicated and exonerated.’
Prosecutors investigation into the allegations are still ongoing.
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