UPDATE: Car dealer denies he fired man for being a volunteer firefighter

UPDATE

As I wrote when I first posted this story after it had gone viral on Facebook and was picked by a U.K. tabloid, it only presented one side. Now we know what the former employer of James Tyler Williams is saying about the firing of the volunteer firefighter. It’s a “he said, he said” case.

Five Star Automotive says it didn’t fire Williams for being a volunteer firefighter. The attorney for Williams, Chris Thompson, says they did.

At the moment, the Facebook post by Williams(below) has more than 38,000 comments, almost 91,000 people like it and it has been shared almost 190,000 times.

WMAZ-TV:

Five Star General Manager Jeremy Shaughnessy said Williams may have been disgruntled because he was in training for a service training position, but the department felt the position was not for him and wanted him back in sales where he had worked 90 percent of the time since he started a couple of months ago.

Thompson says his client was fired for being a volunteer fireman, and not being 100 percent committed to working at Five Star.

We asked why Williams would be disgruntled, and Shaughnessy said that he might not have wanted to go back to sales. He said he was shocked by Williams’ Facebook post stressing that the dealership would not fire someone on the basis of them being a volunteer firefighter.

EARLIER

It’s hard to say what to make of this story because I’ve seen nothing that gives both sides of what occurred. All we know is what James Tyler Williams, a Georgia volunteer firefighter, is telling us on Facebook. The Facebook post has received more than 21,000 comments, liked more than 53,000 times and shared by almost 115,000 people. The post has also seen wider coverage thanks to an article in the Mirror, a tabloid out of the U.K.

Williams, in the post below, says his boss fired him after the boss learned that James Williams was a volunteer firefighter.

Again, that I have seen, there is no news coverage providing any other view of the story than what Williams has posted. All I know about Williams is what is on his Facebook page. It includes a number of fire related posts, including stories from STATter911 and the Fire Critic. What do you think?