Top-shelf liquor smashed - $1600 worth - by NY woman tired of waiting for store clerk

(CBS/WCBS/AP) NYACK, N.Y. - Impatience is not a virtue - especially if you own a suburban New York liquor store where a customer smashed $1600 worth of booze because she got upset about not being waited on.

Police say 31-year-old Mahogony Morrow swept her arm through a shelf of top-shelf liquor and smashed it onto the floor because she felt a clerk at the Nyack store was too slow to help her, according to CBS station WCBS.

Surveillance video from the Rite-Buy Wines & Liquors in Nyack shows the woman sticking out her right arm as she strides out of the store Feb. 23. She knocks dozens of bottles from a waist-high shelf, breaking many of them.

The owner's son, Chris Giacopelli, says the damage included bottles of pricey Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch - $180 a bottle.

Morrow turned herself in, and told WCBS, "It was a big mistake. I am apologetic. That's not me. That's not my character. That's not my demeanor." 

She told the station her behavior was a reaction to a dispute with the store clerk, claiming the clerk's use of the phrase "you people" set her off.

"'You people, you kind of people, don't know why you come in here 'cuz you cause so much trouble.'" Who is 'you people?' And what is my kind of people?" Morrow said.

Giacopelli said the clerk told a different story, but no matter.

"Either way, no excuse what she did. Whatever she was feeling, still shouldn't have done what she done. I didn't like it, could've walked out and gone to another liquor store," Giacopelli said.

WCBS  reports Morrow is charged with criminal mischief, a felony that could land her in prison for more than a year.