TORONTO – A GTA-based Twitter user, whose public request for a drug dealer to deliver some goods to his workplace went viral Tuesday after York Regional Police (YRP) retweeted the request, has been fired from his job.
According to a tweet from the user, who identifies himself as Sunith Baheerathan on Twitter, he was fired from his job at Mr. Lube Tuesday afternoon.
“Any dealers in Vaughan wanna make a 20sac chop,” tweeted Baheerathan Tuesday, requesting that the dealer deliver to a Mr. Lube location at Keele Street and Langstaff Road in Vaughan.
But, an hour later the user received a reply from an unlikely source – York Regional Police.
“Awesome! Can we come too,” replied the official police account, retweeting the original message at the same time.
As of Wednesday morning YRP’s tweet had received over 2,800 retweet and 1,900 favourites.
But they weren’t finished just yet. The YRP account then tweeted the original pot-plea message to businessman Jim Treliving, who owns the collective investment portfolio T&M group of businesses – including Mr. Lube.
Read More: York Regional Police reply to Twitter pot plea
The official Twitter account for Mr. Lube Canada responded to YRP’s tweet Tuesday evening thanking them for bringing the issue to their attention and noting, “The matter has now been handled.”
Jim Treliving did not respond to YRP’s tweet.
Baheerathan continued to actively tweet throughout the controversy stemming from his account yesterday, noting many times throughout his feed that people shouldn’t take his tweets so seriously.
In a tweet sent just after 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday – prior to Baheerathan tweeting about being fired – he said, “Can’t lie, stupid move but would y’all have noticed that tweet if YRP didn’t retweet it?”
The Twitter user has since updated his Twitter bio to read, “Disclaimer: My tweets are NOT serious by any means.”
Whether serious or not, the outcome could have been much different for Baheerathan.
According to Constable Blair McQuillan – the man behind the tweet – his team at YRP carefully weighed their options before choosing to reply to the tweet.
“We could have, and we did discuss a completely different route in this – turning it over to investigators – we have had other instances where we turn things over to investigators,” Const. McQuillan told Global News Tuesday.
McQuillan said the tweet was originally spotted by someone on the community response team – a team which he says is made up of YRP’s media officers, alongside plain-clothes civilian employees.
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