A woman who was trying on a dress at a JC Penney store in Hayward says she was stunned when a live scorpion fell out of the garment after she pulled it over her head and shoulders.

The woman, Sandra Hernandez of Hayward, said she was shopping at Southland Mall at about 11:15 a.m. Sunday and was trying on a dress in the JC Penney fitting room. She said that as she pulled the dress over her head, the scorpion was flung up into the air and it plopped onto the floor in front of her.

“I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ ” she said. “As it came down it hit the floor and right away I’m like “Oh my God!”

Her 11-year-old daughter, in the fitting room next door, responded: “What’s wrong with you now?”

“I’m — ‘Oh my God there’s a scorpion!’” Hernandez recounted.

Hernandez said the scorpion was brown-yellow and about 3 inches long.

“It was just on the floor for a second then it started running to the carpet,” Hernandez said, adding that she feared it would blend into the coloring of the carpet.

Hernandez, who was wearing boots — and hadn’t taken them off to try on her dresses — used her boot to nudge the stinging arthropod back into the floor of the fitting room and called for help. The scorpion, she said, charged at her boot then ran to a baseboard and stopped there.

“I was in disbelief. It was scary,” said Hernandez, who snapped a picture of the scorpion with her cell phone. “I needed someone from the store to see this because it was serious. Last time I saw one of those was behind glass at the friggin zoo.”



A store clerk arrived and wanted to squash it but Hernandez implored her to get a store manager. Meanwhile, the scorpion ran across the fitting room and to another baseboard, where a manager tried to capture it in a bag. The venomous arachnid instead skittered behind the baseboard and squeezed into a crevice. Workers pulled off the baseboard but could not find the scorpion, Hernandez said.

Hernandez, herself a former JC Penney employee — a former salon manager — said she called the corporate office of the chain store to report the incident. She said she learned that the store called an exterminator and held a meeting with sales associates to inform them of the incident. Corporate appeared to be trying to determine where the dress shipment came from, Hernandez said.

“They were all shocked,” Hernandez said of the store workers. “They didn’t believe it.”

Hernandez said the freak incident has made her think twice about trying on clothing at department stores — since much of the clothing is transported in from foreign countries and through warehouses in other states.

“I’m going to be extremely cautious because this isn’t just a JC Penney thing,” Hernandez said. “This can happen anywhere.”

A JC Penney worker at Southland Mall confirmed that there was a scorpion incident at the store.

“It was scary,” Hernandez said. “I carried that damn dress around for like 30 minutes (before entering the fitting room). At any time that thing could have stung me.”