My question involves criminal law for the state of: Texas
My daughter was grocery shopping at Wal-mart (Spring, TX) last night. She used self checkout and paid for the $130.xx in her shopping cart. Also I need to say that she had a bottle of wine so a store employee had to help her with checkout to verify her age. She forgot about the case of bottled water that was on the bottom rack of her buggy. Loss prevention stopped her before she exited the store. She told them that she forgot to pay for it and offered to pay. They said no, it was now evidence. They took her to the security room where she was placed for an hour while the manager???? was 'deciding' if he wanted to press charges or not. During this hour she was degraded by him and other employees, some employees were taking her picture and sharing it on some social media (she thinks snapchat). He kept threatening her with calling the police saying if he did she would never be a teacher because of a theft record (she is a junior at university with an education major). She tried to reason with him, stating she purchased over $130 in groceries and the $4 case of water was an innocent oversite and that if she were truly trying to steal something she wouldn't have been buying wine that required store assistance for age verification. Long story short, he never called the police and she never signed anything, the only thing he gave her was a letter stating that Wal-marts lawyers would be in contact with her because she owe's $200-$1000 in restitution. I am blown away, this seems nothing short of legalized extortion for an innocent oversight. Let me also add that she has NEVER been in trouble of any kind, she is 21 and a straight A student at a large Texas university. What should we do????

