Two St. Louis Starbucks Workers Stopped an Armed Robbery, Then Were Fired for It

What Happened

In December 2023, two hooded men entered a Starbucks near St. Louis University in Midtown. One pulled what appeared to be a gun on employees behind the counter. Ten workers and one customer dropped to the floor.

One of the robbers rushed the cash register and shoved a female employee out of the way. Michael Harris, working the drive-thru, stepped over to the register and tried to open it, but didn't have managerial access to the cash. According to Fox 2 News, which obtained and published security footage on Thursday, the robber responded by pistol-whipping Harris in the back of the head.

"After that point, like when my vision went black, I was like I'm about to get shot," Harris told Fox 2. "It was definitely a life or death situation in my eyes."

The Counterattack

A second employee, Devin Jones-Ransom, saw the robber lower the weapon. He tackled the armed man, running him into the drive-thru window. The gun broke on impact, and Jones-Ransom realized it was a fake.

Harris joined in. "The trigger broke off when they hit him with it," Harris said. "My coworker announced that it was a fake gun like right as he got it off of him and that's when we jumped and started to fight them a little more."

Overhead security cameras captured both employees fighting the robbers across the dining area. One robber, Joshua Noe, was pinned to the ground and held until police arrived. The other, Marquis Porter-Doyle, fled. Noe's post-arrest mugshot showed his face covered in blood with multiple cuts and scrapes.

Both Noe and Porter-Doyle have since been convicted of robbery and sentenced to prison, according to Fox 2.

Then Starbucks Fired Them

Weeks after stopping the robbery, Harris and Jones-Ransom were terminated. The source article, reported by Fox 2 and covered by the New York Post, does not include an official on-record statement from Starbucks explaining the specific termination rationale, so the company's stated reasoning is not confirmed in available sourcing.

Starbucks has a widely known corporate policy discouraging employees from physically resisting robberies. The reasoning behind such policies is significant: corporate safety teams and liability attorneys consistently argue that engaging an armed robber escalates risk to everyone in the store. Employees who don't know the gun is fake—and Harris didn't know until after he was already hit—are in genuine danger of being shot. From that legal and safety-liability standpoint, the policy exists to prevent someone from dying over a cash register.

Where It Falls Apart

The issue is that Harris didn't know the gun was fake when he first stepped up to the register. He was trying to comply, attempting to open the drawer, when he got pistol-whipped. The active fight only escalated after Jones-Ransom discovered the weapon wasn't real. These aren't employees who went rogue chasing down a shoplifter over a $12 bottle of shampoo. One of them had already been struck in the head.

Separately, the store was described in Fox 2's coverage as crime-plagued. Context that no policy memo fixes.

Neither Fox 2 nor the New York Post includes Starbucks' full official explanation on the record. It is unknown, based on available sourcing, whether Harris or Jones-Ransom pursued legal action, filed for unemployment, or received any compensation. No statement from Starbucks' corporate communications team appears in these reports.

The New York Post's framing is adversarial toward Starbucks throughout, which is fair given the facts, but readers should note that Starbucks' complete account of why specifically these two employees were let go has not been reported in the sources available here.

Where Things Stand

The two robbers are imprisoned. The two employees who stopped them are not working at Starbucks. The unresolved question, as of June 20, 2026, is whether Harris or Jones-Ransom have pursued any formal claim against Starbucks—wrongful termination, workers' compensation for the head injury, or otherwise—and whether Starbucks has ever addressed the firings publicly beyond whatever was communicated to the employees directly.