Restaurant Suspended Victim of Kidnaping

A Taco Bell manager who was kidnaped at gunpoint and robbed of the night’s receipts as she left work last week was later suspended from her job.

Sonia Maithonis, 26, of Santa Clarita, who escaped from her kidnaper by jumping from a moving car, said she was suspended for failing to deposit $1,600 in cash receipts in the bank earlier on the evening of Oct. 6. She said she did not leave Taco Bell to deposit the money at 8 p.m., as company policy states, because the two workers at the restaurant did not speak English and could not be left alone.

Elliott Bloom, a spokesman for Taco Bell Corp. in Irvine, said Maithonis will be receiving full pay for the nearly two-week suspension, ordered while officials investigated possible violations of “closing procedures and cash-handling procedures.” No wrongdoing was found, he said, and Maithonis is expected to return to work Friday.